‘Parking in Color’ project signals a leap for Public Art

The concept of Public Art emerges in striking focus – both visually and sonically, with an essential component of utilitarian construction – and in an unexpected context with the opening of Parking in Color in downtown Fort Worth. The title of the artwork also is the name of the building, a $25 million parking garage anchoring the 1200 Houston St. corner opposite the Convention Center.

The signature artist/architect is Christopher Janney, who devoted the past weekend to a series of lectures and discussions explaining his unusual approach to combining the tactile and visual arts with architecture and music. Not only does Parking in Color fulfill a practical requirement of the need for automobile parking at the southern reaches of the Central Business District – it does so, as well, in a way that enlivens the purely functional act of stowing one’s car with a sense of playful adventure.

The experience might prove sufficiently fascinating to render valet-parking amenities irrelevant around the Fort Worth Convention Center: What motorist can resist the prospect of taking part personally in the sight-and-sound symphony that greets visitors to the new parking garage?

As the downtown area develops a deepening connection with the west side Cultural District – a long-in-coming result of combined municipal and private-sector development along a corridor defined largely by the stretch between Seventh Street and the West Freeway – Parking in Color appears timed ideally to emphasize the relationship. It joins such other central-city cultural beacons as Bass Performance Hall, Jonathan Borofsky’s towering Man with Briefcase sculpture in Burnett Plaza, and the architecturally striking properties originally developed by Pier 1 Imports and RadioShack in remarking the cultural underpinnings of the downtown-area economic engine.

Parking in Color was commissioned by the city of Fort Worth through Fort Worth Public Art. Christopher Janney’s intertwined careers in music, art and architecture had come to the attention of the municipal interests through his widespread Urban Musical Instruments series – including a Bank of America sight-and-sound parking structure called Touch My Building, in Charlotte, N.C. The work-of-art aspect of Fort Worth’s Parking in Color accounts for a $687,719 investment in design, fabrication and installation, said Martha Peters, director of Public Art.

The façade is enlivened by the Janney trademark of multicolored glass on each corner of the 11-story structure and in the center of the Throckmorton Street side. During the day, these fins cast mingled shadows of blue, plum, teal and salmon over the façade, allowing sunlight to “paint” the surface. At night, the fins’ shadows are generated by a series of low-energy LED fixtures. The project is an extension of Janney’s exploration into the “hidden music” inherent in architecture – from highlighting the rhythmic pattern of the glass façade to the movement of the pedestrians throughout the tower waiting areas and elevators.

Central to Parking in Color is a score of environmental sounds indigenous to Fort Worth region – including music from experimental jazz to classical to Western swing, the spiel of a livestock auctioneer, the chirping of birds and/or crickets and the ruckus of the Stock Show’s rodeos. As part of the 11–story elevator tower, this audio kaleidoscope is heard through loudspeakers situated on each floor.

Anyone who enters the elevator tower is greeted by the shifting sound-scape. The elevatorsÂ’ call-buttons trigger a melodic trill, followed by related sounds as an elevator car arrives. The sounds continue inside the elevator, with slight pitch variations at each level. Rarely do the same environmental sounds repeat within a single time frame.

Janney collaborated on elements of the buildingÂ’s design with the project architects/engineers, Jacobs Facilities Inc. and Brent Byers, AIA, principal in charge.

Janney, trained as an architect and a jazz musician, has achieved international renown as an artist, composer and architect. He has created numerous permanent interactive sound-and-light installations. The stated objective is to make architecture more spontaneous and engaging.

Other projects include Reach – New York, at the 34th Street subway station in New York; Whistle Grove: The National Steamboat Monument in Cincinnati; and Sonic Forest: Zaragoza for the World’s Fair in Zaragoza, Spain. Janney has been a visiting professor at the Cooper Union and the Pratt Institute in New York, lecturing on the concept of “Sound as a Visual Medium.” His book, Architecture of the Air (Sideshow Media; $40), offers a concise summation of the approach.

An exhibition of Janney’s projects, likewise titled Architecture of the Air,” on view through April 7 at the Fort Worth Convention Center, will move at midweek to the ground-floor storefront of the new building’s Houston Street façade.

On the Web: www.fwpublicart.org and www.janney.com.