PARADA:
La Celebración
No Termina Aquí

As part of the 2024 Sunset Park Puerto Rican Day Parade and Festival and in collaboration with members of El Grito, the one day pop-up installation during the events defined a central meeting point in Sunset Park as the parade transitioned into a festival. For the past nine years on a special day in early June, the Puerto Rican community has celebrated their culture and history, by transforming the 5th Avenue corridor and southern end of the park into a continuous rhythmic streetscape. Since the Puerto Rican community’s contributions to sustaining local ecologies and environments in Sunset Park are rarely acknowledged, this project highlighted those contributions through a simple framework. This project was conceived of as part of my Master’s of Architecture design thesis. It was important for me to ground my thesis in reality, in order to create a design-build project that could be used in the “real world.” Instead of solely presenting the project at final reviews, the project traveled to Brooklyn where it had an afterlife.

Contributing to a long history of experimental research in tensile structures, Parada created a multi-functional lightweight pavilion that incorporates fabric as a material that creates unique atmospheric and tactile experiences. The central pavilion planimetrically echoes a sun and defines a central meeting point, similar to a Puerto Rican batey, where bomba and plena were played and danced. The form of the pavilion resembles the design and movement of bomba skirts, as its undulating canopy moved with the people, beats, and wind.