Swapescape

• Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA
• 2021
• 8 Acres
• Client: Landscape Architecture Magazine

Responding to an invitation from Landscape Architecture Magazine to creatively reimagine how a retail street might be designed to bring people back to shop and reconnect, Mantle chose to re-envision Telegraph Avenue in Oakland.

The team’s vision transformed this street into a heterogeneous organism that thrives on the multiplicity found in urban life. Telegraph Avenue becomes a place that embraces socioeconomic diversity and ecological principles – rejecting society’s “throwaway”culture. Here, a more complex web of commerce is envisioned, where “buying” isn’t the sole mechanism for the exchange of goods.

The proposal takes inspiration from retail’s etymological root “retailler,” a French word meaning “a piece cut off, shred, scrap.” Building off the collage-like character of the eclectic businesses on Telegraph Avenue today, the plan proposes transforming the street into an urban “Exchange Park,” expanding infrastructure to support different modes of consumption and becoming a place where you can still shop for new, but also barter, swap, fix, donate, upcycle, share, or borrow.

People replace vehicles as the primary activators of this community-focused street. Opportunity Kiosks activate the interior with direct-to-consumer businesses, repair co-ops, and barter booths. The linear architectural facades are re-formed to create a serrated frame that shape outdoor rooms for varied activities. 

Telegraph Swapscape examines how our public spaces are structured to enable our “pay to play” consumer landscape and replaces it with a commerce of reciprocity, broadening equity and access, and acknowledging our world’s resources are limited. Read The full article.