Urban Napping Investigations

Photo documentation from intervention in Columbus, OH. Photo courtesy of Bill Minckler.

Urban Napping in Park City, Utah.

Installation of Napping Hub in a gallery setting.

To see a map with locations of Urban Naps across the United States, click here.

Urban Napping was conceived as a means of placing my resting body into a portion of the urban landscape where its presence would question the validity of the spatial designations on either side of it and where it could turn public spaces into private ones.  Parking spaces became ideal sites for the type of intervention that I envisioned as they allowed individuals to legally acquire spaces in populated areas and frequently bordered areas that were designated as “public,” or spaces of individual transient use where pedestrians enacted an anonymous, public front.  Once parked I could feed the meter and get 2 hours of time for which the space was mine.  From this position I could cantilever my body over the adjacent sidewalk in a hammock and rest, read, take naps, etc.