Collaboration between Yousman Okano and Jon Gentry (2010)
PROJECT TITLE: 155 SOUTH MAIN STREET: AN ADDRESS FOR HOMELESSNESS
In 1907, Seattle's James E. Casey established what has become the largest shipping company in the world - the United Parcel Service. As a company that owes its very existence to addresses, it is ironic that its birthplace (memorialized by Pioneer Square's Waterfall Garden Park) is now at the very epicenter of Seattle's homeless and "address-less" population. This entry attempts to memorialize not only those that have dies homeless in Seattle, but also acknowledge the plight of the city's current destitute population. It strives to prevent their ostracism by symbolically providing something most of society takes for granted - an address. This is not a s address in the traditional sense, but instead a collection of small steel boxes of varying lengths representing each of Seattle's 4,400 homeless residents and their respective time spent homeless. Viewed collectively, the boxes unavoidably present the extent of homelessness in Seattle.
It is with the visitor's decent into the memorial and the "uncovering" of the scale of homelessness in Seattle as a backdrop that those who have dies are memorialized. Opposite the wall of boxes, the name of each indigent that has passed away is raised off a wall with water cascading behind. By using water from Waterfall Garden Park, a link is made between main stream society and those that are still living "address-less" and finally to those that have dies "address-less."
This monument strives to assure the destitute will not be forgotten either in passing or in life.