Coming to an Empty Lot Near You: Free Mini Golf

Yes! What a great use of otherwise empty space. You could turn these lots into all sorts of creative playful spaces.

Free min-golf courses are popping up in the strangest places. In Amsterdam, playful forms invite players to “park and play” in an under-used parking lot, while in Detroit, Roosevelt Par shows how an abandoned lot between burnt-out buildings strewn with old cars can become a make-shift, albeit rough, urban playground.

In Amsterdam, Dutch firm NL architects has turned an expansive parking lot for the Harbor Club into a 9-hole mini-golf course. Design Boom writes that more of these DIY projects are popping-up there with the slow down in new building construction. With lots of empty lots, there are now opportunities in the Netherlands for pop-up gardens, farms, and, yes, now mini-golf.

Organized by Carolien Ligtenberg, Platform Openbare Ruimte (POR), the architects were given a tiny budget of just 2,500 Euros. The inexpensive course was created with sod “grass carpet.”