... eat out of one. The Quartyard site in East Village is undergoing an unusual conversion: vacant space into a temporary urban park. And the special ingredient is recycled shipping containers.

Rad Lab is doing the conversion, so we asked chief creative officer Jason Grauten for a tour. Build-out of the space will be completed by mid-December. The 30k SF urban park and marketplace at Park Boulevard and Market Street will feature S&M Sausage and Meat, an “eclectic meatery” creation of restaurateur Scott Slater, along with a coffee shop, on-site management, art galleries, farmers/craft markets, and an outdoor beer garden. There will also be parking stalls for food trucks and flexible event space.

Quartyard is the brainchild of these four, snapped at the groundbreaking this month: Rad Labs CFO Adam Jubela, COO David Loewenstein, Jason, and CEO Philip Auchettl. The project evolved from the team’s thesis studies while graduate students at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design, conceived to deal with city-owned vacant land. This particular lot has been empty for a number of years, gathering nothing but trash.

The project employs recycled and retrofitted shipping containers that act as its core building blocks and serve as a temporary placeholder for future permanent development. Kickstarter funds, fittingly enough, kick-started the project. Jason tells us that Rad Labs is in the conceptual phase of other such projects, though no sites have been identified. Another San Diego lot might be next, or it could be in LA or elsewhere in SoCal, or even a place like Denver.