Our goal is to inspire change in the way we think about asphalt spaces.

The asphalt landscape is the most public of all landscapes, at the same time the most undervalued: it lies invisible and unrecognized as a cultural landscape.  Asphalt is one of the most liberating inventions that shaped the 20th century world.  It allows us to fly and drive everywhere we desire – making the entire world accessible to us.  Our association with asphalt occurs on a daily basis; our streets are paved with it, we park our car on it.  Asphalt is everywhere around us.  Yet asphalt is for most of us an 'unseen' material.  Public spaces such as parks and plazas are often seen as belonging to the traditional realm of landscape architecture.  However, parking lots and roads are perhaps the most public spaces of all, as we use these spaces on a daily basis. But as a landscape space, they are often only serving the utilitarian function of accommodating the car, which it does excellently.

This dichotomy between the omnipresence of asphalt in our daily lives and its public perception as an unappreciated material raises the question how to reinterpret the ordinary landscapes of parking lots and roads.  The powerful and inspiring properties of asphalt as a material and the deficiency of asphalt spaces as engaged public landscapes is the subject of this website; to inspire change in this condition allows us to directly intervene in the contents of our culture.

onAsphalt is initiated by Paula Meijerink, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Design School and founding principal of WANTED, a design studio in the Boston area. (www.W-A-N-T-E-D.com). 

The Asphalt Team consists of Mary Lydecker, and Amanda Bailey, research assistants and graduate students of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.  James F. Kraus of Art Guy Studios is a Boston based illustrator and designer who's skills have been invaluable to the content and design of our website. (www.artguy.com)
The website was produced by Brad Solomon. Not only a webmaster but an excellent musician and audiophile.

The research that onAsphalt represents is made possible through a grant from Harvard University.