Mercado Negro by Ramon Coronado

Mercado Negro is a Spanish word for Black Market. This project deals with reclaiming an ordinary, everyday object and transforming it into something with a completely different purpose. Ramon Coronado spent a year in Los Angeles area and was concerned by the lack of recreational areas for kids in Los Angeles. The irony being that he lived across from MacArthur park, but because of it’s dangerous reputation, no children would ever go there to play and often resorted to playing on the streets running in and out of traffic.
This area is filled with trash on the sidewalks, people sleeping everywhere, and an abundance of shopping carts. Shopping carts exist everywhere and anywhere throughout the city of LA and include themselves as part of LA’s landscape.  Ramon Coronado took it upon himself to take a shopping cart and make a statement with it. He reclaimed LA’s iconic shopping cart and created furniture for kids to enjoy in these urban Los Angeles areas. The project is a criticism of the scarcity of recreational functions for kids growing up in a dense city like Los Angeles.

++ More on this project at Ramon Coronado website !