Bentley Balls used found materials to install the "Great Canadian (Fake) Swimming Hole" - complete with tire swing.

Tree planters are often placed on the streets with good intentions of adding a necessary boost of green space, yet they can often become neglected within large sprawling cities where no one takes direct responsibility. Martindale hopes that his Outside the Planter projects encourage people to have more direct participation and interest in their shared public spaces. As he states:

“We all have stakes in our shared environments, and this public project directly engages with Toronto’s urban fabric. One of the primary intents of the Outside the Planter Boxes project is to encourage more direct participation and interest in our shared public spaces - to demonstrate that the public can play a more consciously active role in how our city is shaped.”

The project was supported by a Toronto FEAST Grant and Sean asked participants not to cause any major permanent damage as the installations were not authorized by the City of Toronto. However, you can only hope that they would be viewed as constructive interventions, as opposed to destructive by the local authorities.

+ Outside the Planter

+ Sean Martindale

Via INSPIX

1 Comment

lazyreader August 3, 2011 at 2:19 pm

It’s funny and interesting, still the argument is that the planters are rather hideous to begin with. Who ever decided that bare concrete was a pleasing decoration. Why not replace them outright with more pleasing ones. If older architectural style buildings occupy the site use older looking planters. Modern buildings near the site can use planters can use solid polished stone. Adjust the height and thickness of the planters so people can sit on them which is sometimes discouraged by the business that installed the original ones.