Students and faculty were greeted with a strange sight in the Quad on Wednesday. A living room sprouted up, complete with a hay-lined floor and furniture made of dumpster harvested cardboard.
The United States Green Building Club (USGBC) built a living room made out recycled materials in the Quad to celebrate National Parking Day on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013.
The display was an effort put together by the U.S. Green Building Council Student Group of PCC.
The event was presented by the USGBC in an effort to promote taking public space and giving it back to the public.
The idea for the event was hatched from Parking Day, an event in September where artists, designers and everyday citizens take parking spaces and transform them into pop-up parks.
Due to last minute planning issues, the event was moved on campus and pushed to October, according to club adviser and architecture instructor Sandy Lee
“We were going to use the space in between Starbucks and Panda Express that’s kind of like a walkway,” said Lee. “But it was so last minute that we didn’t think we could get a good event together so we decided to transition it to somewhere that’s a little bit more visual for our campus.”
The USGBC is a new club on campus aimed at promoting sustainability in the way buildings are designed and operated.
“We’re a club that consists of architecture students, engineering students, computer science students and a few music students,” said club president Dennis Uyat.
The living room was constructed using green materials. The hay donated from the pumpkin patch across the street, while the walls and some of the furniture was made out of cardboard harvested from dumpsters around campus or donated by faculty.
“The IT department has a big shipment of Dell computers so as they were taking out the computers we were taking the boxes one by one,” said Lee.
There were also free refreshments. One student walked up and asked if he could take an apple that he happily walked away with.
Lee said that urban spaces need to incorporate more outdoor social spaces.
“So much of our public space has to do with concrete, asphalt and parking,” she said.
Students and staff were able to hang out in the makeshift living space and were treated to games and dancing from PCC’s Salsa Club for entertainment.
The USGBC meets on Fridays from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in IT 226.
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