Danger Danger

The design group CABE is dedicated to the creation of "good" urban design, this might seem a bit pretentious to be outright about their better-than-you mentality, but I certainly think this text is a valid and outright good point.

Design is interesting when it is not a safe zone, space is interesting when it is interactive and poses problems, intrigue, danger, and relief. Why are we designing things to be mentally groundbreaking without a little physical groundbreaking in there, if you know what I mean?

Anyway, here is the text, its good, its interesting and its not safe.

LIVING WITH RISK

Why solar power these public portable passageways? I dunno!!! Seems pointless. Are solar panels supposedly making this public installation a worth while project? Then I say, why build it in the first place.


Bethan Wood. Interesting...

check out Dezeen

McCarren Park

Metal Mountains= BURN

The new Park on Pier 1 of the Brooklyn Waterfront is "the hottest" new attraction. The new play area includes items like swings, large ceramic animals, new steel domes, and everything sits on hard concrete! This image is early in its habitation, but as you can imagine... steel domes+ direct sunlight all day long is really awesome for leather-ing up your kids hands early on. Ow!!!

It has become apparent to the park that these structure "May become hot with heating" and they put up signs that I am sure all the 2 year olds can take under advisement and steer clear of the burning blobs of molten steel posed as fun, shiny, interactive structures.

concrete and steel, its a winner!

The New Building at The Cooper Union, Playground?

This NEW Building at Cooper Union in the Lower East Side of Manhattan has caused so much uproar in the face of "new" architecture in the City. It is the newest spectacle of tourists, designed by architect Thom Mayne from the Californian firm Morphosis, and has brought a considerable amount of attention to the school.

It is such an exciting and playful design, interactive from the inside with its verticality broken up by a 4 story grand staircase, spiraling assents, colorful stairwells, textural elements, and an attractive dynamic sensibility. The exterior even moves into the street, with concrete ramps that has been a key spot for skaters, riders, and people to climb and slide down since the opening of the building.

It is so playful in fact, that the school seems to have contacted local authorities to sit in fake Taxis and reprimand people for interacting with the space! Be aware, of you are going to hit the spot, tickets are being issued for Disorderly Conduct in which participant(s) acted in a manner which "serves no legitimate purpose".

This Helps:

a. police fill their quota

b. keep those fucking kids off the street

c. gives roided cops someone to yell at with another institution behind their back

d. Cooper Union look like its under police control

e. authorities claim that interactive structures are not up to civilians to discover a "proper function"

f. distinguish and establish a shitty precedent for this law in court systems and definition of "legitimate purpose"

g. apparently to allow cops to call kids "fucking retards" to describe the action of "serving no legitimate purpose"

h. make everyone march in single file lines

i. suck out life blood

Check out NY curbed, the discussion is funny...

Bad Playground Design I

Oh yea this handwork has been in a Bed-Stuy playground (Thompkins Public Housing) for 6 years until people "realized" that there kids were playing in a jail themed orange cage. Apparently the words have been "vandalized" to cover up the insulting suggestion quite a few times over the years but have been repainted to make sure that JAIL could be read clearly.

In March of 2010 the city was told to remove all 6 of the Jail Playgrounds from Public Housing Authorities yards and replace them with new structures that didn't include the idea of prison as a space for fun to young children, the majority of which are Black and Latino. The playgrounds are located in Washington Heights, Brooklyn Heights, Battery City, Lower Harlem, Park Slope, and Bed-Stuy.

In the meantime, as city bureaucracy drags their feet and keeps their head in the sandbox, they painted over the word JAIL with red paint, but you can still see what it says.