South Street Seaport Plans Summer Experiment in Temporary Urbanism
(Courtesy Howard Hughes Corp.)
The South Street Seaport‘s Pier 17 won’t be around much longer in its current form as it awaits a $200 million overhaul by SHoP Architects, but this summer, the neighborhood surrounding it has some exciting plans in store that bring the hottest trends in temporary urbanism to the waterfront site. Starting on Memorial Day Weekend, the See/Change program will bring film screenings, a SmorgasBar, and pop-up shipping container boutiques in hopes of enticing New Yorkers back to this once-trendy Lower Manhattan neighborhood.
Spontaneous Interventions To Spruce Up Chicago’s Millennium Park This Summer
(Courtesy MAS Studio)
Starting Memorial Day, Chicago’s Millennium Park will host the U.S. debut of a bright array of public design projects, many of which appeared at the 2012 Venice Biennale. Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good will feature 84 works, including more than a dozen for Chicago and several that also appeared in Venice.
Fake Proposal For an Urban Beach Gets Raleigh Thinking About Vacant Land
Rendering of Raleigh Beach. (Courtesy Raleigh Beach)
After a long, cold winter, many of us are itching to lock away our wool coats, slip into our flip-flops, and dash to the beach. That’s especially the case for Matt Tomasulo, the artist behind the Raleigh Beach proposal that would transform the corner of West Hargett Street into an alluring summertime oasis in inland North Carolina. His Raleigh Beach rendering depicts sunbathers soaking up the sun while lying on the sand as swimmers cool-off in the pools.
Los Angeles’ New Parklets Bring Color, Fun To the Street
Enjoying LA’s newest Parklet. (Sam Lubell / AN)
Earlier this week, AN reported on the opening of Los Angeles’s first parklet in Eagle Rock. Thursday saw the arrival of the city’s second and third sidewalk-extending mini-parks, located on Spring Street in Downtown LA’s historic core. Created by architects/developers utopiad.org, designers Berry and Linné, and builders Hensel Phelps, the 40 foot by 60 foot parklets, located just a few parallel parking spots from each other, are impressively detailed and fitted, with wood planter boxes, minimalist bench seating, stone pavers, hardwood decking, and quirky touches like seat swings, astro turf, bar seats, colorful fences, foosball tables, and exercise bikes.
Tactical Urbanism Death Match Ends Only With Scratches
“Is Small Big Enough? Planning & Intervening in Public Space.” (Courtesy Flux Factory)
What happens when you gather four tactical urbanists in one room for a “Death Match”-style debate asking, “Is Small Big Enough?” You get a choir. The panel at the Flux Factory’s discussion last night was equipped with “smackdown cards” to challenge the views of their opponents, but they all agreed more often than they disagreed, that the small scale actions at the root of tactical urbanism—and this years US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Spontaneous Interventions—are just fine. What emerged from the packed house was a highly polished discussion, where minor differences were exposed, ground down, and made smooth.
Projecting the Social Life of Small Urban Stoops
Oh.No.Sumo's "Stairway Cinema" in New Zealand. (Simon Devitt/Courtesy Oh.No.Sumo)
New Yorkers like to believe that they’ve perfected stoop sitting culture, but half a world away in Auckland, New Zealand, experimental design collaborative Oh.No.Sumo has taken stoop sitting a step higher. As part of St. Paul Street Gallery‘s 2012 exhibition program of curatorial practice, Oh.No.Sumo created a small-scale tactical intervention forming an unexpected theater on a small stoop where the steps are the seats. Responding to the intersection’s lack of social life and the public’s retreat into smart-phone isolation, the Stairway Cinema creates a communal node and conversation piece.
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