Overview

In nearly every culture, the table is a symbol of connection between people. Tables make places where people come together. By providing a space for eating, writing, negotiating, or playing games, tables give us a platform to interact with one another.

We propose a table for the Greenway that might someday be remembered as the “Big Table.” Big because it meanders throughout the entire length of the Greenway – about 1.5 miles – probably making it the longest table in the world were it to be connected at street crossings during a special event. At approximately 8000 feet in length it could seat 7500 people at once. Comprised of more than 1200-painted picnic tables conjoined into one solitary gesture, it will unite the Greenway’s segmented parks and surrounding communities giving both symbolic and functional meaning to the notion of connection while making an unprecedented spectacle.

The Table turns corners and switches back on itself, responding to the physical features within each of the individual parks through which it passes while creating new spaces within its folds that can be used for a limitless number of activities.

What was once a slash dividing the City is now a suture; a healing connections between communities that unites a necklace of disconnected green spaces and gives meaning to a space upon which most of the buildings have turned their backs.

Activate

The Table promises to activate the spaces around it. Formed within its meanders and turns, the Table provides opportunities for creating outdoor rooms and seating for all sorts of urban activities some of which already happen regularly on the Greenway while others will be completely new. From Yoga classes to outdoor concerts, arts and crafts fairs to food truck festivals, public movie theaters to urban lounges, the table will generate opportunities for local organizations to make functional spaces for their public events. This process is reliant upon strategic partnership with local Boston community programs and groups. For example, if Boston ping-pong club wants an arena for their weekly league matches, they can work with Ball-Nogues and the Conservancy to design such a space within one of the meanders of the Table.

A Ribbon of Color

The Table will be a spectacle of color weaving through the City. From the buildings above the Greenway it will be appear as a continuous spectral gradation, undulating and shifting -when in fact it is composed of a limited palette taken from a paint chip fan book of a major national paint brand. To achieve this effect, we will use employ the technique of dithering, which according to Wikipedia, dithering is a technique used in computer graphics to create the illusion of color depth in images with a limited color palette (color quantization). In a dithered image, colors not available in the palette are approximated by a diffusion of colored pixels from within the available palette.

Color serves two purposes for the Table, not only to create an engaging ever-changing composition suggestive of Op Art or the work of Carlos Cruz Diez, but also to differentiate zones by way of color rather than function. Visitors may indentify different areas of the Greenway by the color of the Table in that vicinity – “meet me at the purple section of the Table in Dewy Square Park.”

Adapt

Rather than propose proscribing a specific form, we think of the Table is as an adaptable and scalable system for functioning as a kit-of-parts, re-making spaces within the City. As the design process proceeds, the shape, and size and deployment of the Table can adapt to changing financial conditions and outreach opportunities without sacrificing its power and meaning. The same is true of the table post-installation, it can be reconfigured and reorganized to accommodate these changing needs of the people that use it.

Reuse

After the Table has run its course, joining, activating and enriching the Greenway, it will be dismantled to its constituent, smaller scaled tables that can be distributed to homes, schools, businesses, or even other parks.

Moving beyond recycling, which down-cycles material into a less valuable state, reusing tables means less waste than typically produced by a temporary art projects but perhaps, more importantly, it means that the piece will live on for years to come, reminding us of the connective potential of the Greenway. This reminder shall remain a powerful symbol long after the Table ceases to occupy the Greenway.