Softwalks as submitted by Bland Hoke
This content is brought to you by GOOD, with the support of the BMW Guggenheim Lab
This summer, GOOD and the BMW Guggenheim Lab teamed up to announce the project Transform a Public Place, a call for ideas on how to make a public space in your city more comfortable. Ideas will be reviewed by Maria Nicanor, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile laboratory bringing together new ideas for improving urban life. The ideas selected by Nicanor will be featured in a special post on GOOD and also on the BMW Guggenheim Lab websites and other social media.
The project closed on July 17 and we’ve received many submissions with fascinating, groundbreaking and quirky ideas from all over the world. While we’re still going through them to highlight our favorites, we wanted to share another sneak peek at some of the innovative ideas we’ve received so far. See some of the other submissions here and here. Be sure to check back with us as we share more ideas and Nicanor’s top picks.
Idea: 42 Cardboard Hammocks on the Market Place
Submitted by: Catalina Trujillo
The Montreuil’s marketplace is already a very versatile space. However, its generous dimensions inspires an installation that allows the public to rest in suspension, to have intimacy, while at the same time promote encounters, playing and new space spatial dynamics. These urban hammocks are made of recycled cardboard. The matter is transformed by a process, into a sort of a “paper fabric,” a soft membrane capable of taking multiple forms, the hammock is one of them.
Idea: Softwalks
Submitted by: Bland Hoke
Softwalks is inspired by sidewalk sheds, the tunnels of scaffolding associated with construction in New York City. However, if you look around many are not active construction sites, yet the scaffold structures negatively impact businesses, restrict pedestrian movement and obscure sunlight.
In response, we developed a simple Kit of Parts consisting of a chair, counter, planter, screen and light fixture. These incremental improvements can be mixed and matched to fit any neighborhood to activate these utilitarian spaces. By doing so, we transform an eyesore into an asset, contributing to the livability of dense urban environments.
Idea: City with Eyes
Submitted by: Anna Dietzsch
The canalization of rivers and streams were part of São Paulo’s public policy in the 1920s and have resulted in the creation of residual spaces throughout the city. Openings in constructions adjacent to the residual areas were not allowed. The proposed intervention recalls Jane Jacobs’ notion that cities need eyes and creates a series of “virtual windows” for artistic interventions that will prompt the population to reflect on its zoning and hidden waters. The intervention also proposes the use of permeable pavement and passive water retention against floods.
Idea: Border Areas
Submitted by: Anne van Strien
By transforming a harsh border in between a collective and public space in Eindhoven, the Netherlands into a soft border area by stretching it, a space arises between those two different worlds. These new in-between spaces function as social connectors between the two adjacent worlds.
This principle works on different types of collective spaces with public space, for instance cemetery St. Petrus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where the wall becomes a space for silence, allotment garden Groen gennep in Eindhoven, where the fence becomes a greenhouse where the public can come and taste the produce, and retirement home, Wilgenhof where the entrance becomes a bus shelter where the elderly are naturally connected to the people waiting for the bus.
City Forward was produced with the BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile laboratory traveling around the world to inspire innovative ideas for urban life. It was open from June 15 through July 29, in Berlin, Germany. Sign up to receive the latest news and get involved. To get the latest news and updates on Twitter, follow @BMWGuggLab and join the conversation via #BGLab.
