Urban Camouflage; What an extremely broad,
and difficult concept. So one of the first thing’s I did on day 1 of this
project was to try and define this term for myself. I came up with urban
camouflage as a method of interrupting the bland city scape with an artistic
intervention to revitalise a space. And I continued to refer to this throughout
my developments.
Location was the driver for what my project
would become. When walking through the city centre, I went through Civic Square
and was surprised to see it in a different light to what I remember. For me
Civic Square was always more of an exciting destination as a young girl, it was
a hub for the city and full of life however what I saw on Tuesday was a
forgotten space, that hadn’t been given any love for some time. So I made the
decision then and there to use this project to develop an idea for revitalising
Civic Square.
My first insight when doing some research
was that Civic Square is a reasonably recent addition to Wellington, having
only been built in the 90’s, what was interesting though was that the design
for it was inspired by the public squares of Europe and dropped into our little
city without much consideration to the differences between Europe and New
Zealand. Because of this, my first direction was to try and bring our kiwi
identity into the space and I created a survey to try and get a feel for what
people loved about Wellington. Getting responses for the survey proved more difficult
than I’d anticipated though, and the comments I did receive were challenging to
try and interpret in the space.
So going back and spending more time in
Civic Square, I watched how people used the space and it was a great turning
point for my project. My focus started to become more on the way people used
the space, and I did a lot of research into zoning and different seating
arrangements as I felt like this was what was really missing from the space. At
the same time I still had the issue of lighting, and addressing all the
different corridor entrances in the back of my head as more ideas I’d like to
tackle in the Square, but I put them aside and focused on seating.
Further research and feedback led me to a
point where in my head, I was designing a structure that would function as a
seat, incorporate lighting, and a tree/greenery. But when I say it out loud it
sounds like a really messy concept – and it was – which made me struggle to get
my head into it.
It was at that point I decided to just step
back and do some reading and generate some new thinking in terms of trying to
re-center the user within my design. The article I read was called “Placemaking
and the Future of Cities” and there was a moment in it where they discussed how
when placemaking is conducted with transparency and good faith, the community
feels a sense of ownership and engagement with the space and design then serves
as function, which really connected with me. It reinforced that just because
we’re designers, doesn’t mean we always know best, and to generate something
that will succeed, you need to put the user first and know what it is they
want.
With this reading in the forefront of my
mind, I went into our interim presentation feeling reasonably solid in my
thinking but nervous about my actual output, but I came out of interim with a
much clearer head. Euan helped me to understand that my concept wasn’t about
seating as such but more about creating engagement in the space. My fixation on
this form of seating had distracted me from my purpose which was to create a
way to make users want to spend time at and engage with Civic Square. The
feedback from my peers led me to think of ways I could test public engagement.
What I came up with was using the bean bags, so on Tuesday I set up 11 bean
bags in the green space at the bottom of the War Memorial to see if the public
would use them and rearrange them to suit their needs as this was what was
really at the centre of my thinking.
This testing was another major step forward
in my project because it made me think a lot about the freedom and comfort
people were enjoying, and how this was more pertinent to my project than some
of my initial ideas. At the height of my test, all the bean bags were in use,
and there were more people milling around the space who looked as though they
were hoping to see a spare beanbag that they could use for themselves. This
justified to me that people do find ‘seating’ a great way to engage with the
space, but it was the freedom of the beanbags that was so popular. Yes there
were plenty of bench seats, but these were rigid and restrictive in their
placement, people enjoyed being able to shift and sit in the bean bags however
they wanted, and in groupings that they wanted.
A highlight for me during the testing was a
young couple that spent over an hour sitting in the beanbags who I actually
talked to at the end. They were absolutely taken with the idea and wanted to
know where to sign to get on board, they thought it was a permanent thing, and they
were just so grateful for the opportunity and the time they’d spent there.
I was reinspired by this test and decided
that moving forward I needed to rethink my rigid structures. Talking through my
project with family, I had my light bulb moment, which was that with this
project I am focusing on my generation and that opened up new doors. There are
already plenty of park benches to suit those older generations who are familiar
with them and find them easier to get in and out of within Civic Square. To
rejuvenate it for the future I needed to be introducing something fun, and
malleable and create an experience for the public that would be different every
time.
My outcome is to introduce beanbags into
the Civic Square space, but I also found a way to incorporate all of the other
research and strong ideas I’d had earlier. The design solution I have come up
with is a semi-portable structure - by semi-portable I mean it would be
designed on lockable wheels to secure it’s place in the Square unless needing to
be moved out for a special event. This structure houses a tree in the centre,
storage for beanbags on either side, and a solid seating structure when the
storage is shut. The storage would be lockable and ideally someone from an
organisation like the council would be responsible for unlocking them on a nice
morning, and then maybe a security guard would be responsible for locking them
up again in the evening but that would be further thought through with more
time. There is also shadow box lighting, and lights up in the tree powered by
solar energy to excite people in the evenings. The idea is that I’d place two
or 3 of these along the edge of the turf line as indicated in this image to
create a kind of zoning between those people using the space as a walk through
from A to B, and those there to spend time in the space.
This idea incorporates all of the things I
was trying to earlier but in a more sophisticated manner.
I have still generated an idea for a type
of structure with a tree in it to introduce more greenery and nature into the
space, and also provide that all important shade on sunny days.
I have kept an element of lighting in there
because I really want to encourage people to interact with the space past the
standard daylight hours that people use it for now.
And following my successful testing I have
settled on beanbags as a form of seating/comfort to encourage people to use and
spend time in the space.
Over the course this project, I definitely
feel like I’ve been up, down, sideways, pretty much all over the place, but
it’s amazing how an idea can progress under a little bit of a pressure for
example today’s presentation deadline. In saying that I have really enjoyed the
last 3 weeks, pushing my own creativity further then I would’ve expected and
being able to see how differently everyone’s creative bent operates, so thank
you all and I’d welcome some feedback.
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