Echo Park is about to get a little more whimsical this summer. A playfully-designed pop-up miniature golf course is being installed in a lot at the corner of Echo Park and Park Avenues, just across the street from Echo Park Lake. TURF, running Thursdays to Sundays from June 18 to July 31, is organized by the nonprofit research, design and art project Materials & Applications.
For TURF, M&A brought together a team of nine architects, designers and artists and asked them each to create one of the course’s nine holes, inspired by the architecture, topography, climate and culture of Los Angeles, taken to playful extremes. One of the guiding principles at M&A is to let architects try out their most fantastical ideas on a small scale, so you know this won’t be the typical putt-putt.
M&A have a history of bringing art outdoors. If you've ever wondered about those interesting structures appearing outside an otherwise normal-looking office building across from LAMILL Coffee in Silver Lake, you already know their work. In 2014, the LA Times reported on the installation series they constructed on a 25-by-40 foot gravel yard outside their exhibition space on Silver Lake Boulevard, which has included a gold-leaf Mylar canopy inspired by black holes, a motorized plant panel which folded and unfolded and even a "fire-shaped gazebo" by the artist Edmund Ming-Yip Kwong.
The TURF golf course will be open to the public Thursdays and Fridays from 4pm to 8pm, Saturdays 10am to 6pm and Sundays 10am to 2pm, in addition to special events and programming, from June 18 through July 31.
