As you may have noticed recently if you follow our Twitter feed, Public Workshop has been working with the great folks at Landon Bone Baker Architects and their community partners to develop a program that enables them to have an even greater impact in the communities where they work than they are able to affect [...]
June 3, 2010
You may or may not have noticed but our society has developed some pretty definite ideas where things such as play, exercise, industry or even work should happen. For a variety of reasons, over time we’ve built up infrastructures that reinforce where, when and how these things should happen. This has manifested itself in the [...]
May 27, 2010
Believe it or not this image is a fake…..sort of. This is what the street really looks like. Look closely, very closely and you will notice that these are exactly the same views. That’s right, the image above is exactly the same as the one below, minus a couple of tweaks in Photoshop. At Public [...]
May 20, 2010
In this day and age, Google has made satellite imagery of our neighborhoods and important landmarks an everyday reality. It’s such a pervasive part of our existence now, can you remember the day when we didn’t have ready access to such materials? Maybe it’s the lack of coffee, but I can’t. My brain inherently wants [...]
May 5, 2010
‘When it snows, children take over the city: they sleigh, throw snowballs, make snowmen and are more visible than ever. But what a city needs for its children has to be more durable than snow.’ -Aldo Van Eyck A few months ago I wrote about my visit last summer to the rather amazing Kolle 37 [...]
April 30, 2010
On the surface this one seems like a no brainer. When you give a building or a community project an award or some sort of public recognition, invite not only the designer to the stage but also the community partners, the funders, the developer, the builder and maybe even…….the user. Let them talk, thank people [...]
April 19, 2010
The see-saw is probably one of the most vilified pieces of equipment you will find on a playground. When I started writing this piece, my intention was to show some of the many examples I found last summer, while on a fellowship in Germany, of how designers have tried to make the see-saw safer. Anecdotally, [...]
Can a really smart dance company help us see the inner workings of our cities more clearly? In the midst of the tidal wave of chatter about redesigning and rebuilding cities, it is often quite easy to forget or simply miss the beauty, and the importance of the everyday. On the most basic level without [...]
February 22, 2010
A travesty? Wheelchair and crutch bound children everywhere, and lawsuits galore? An unappealing jumble of bent nails and ill cut wood? A blight on the neighborhood? Certainly not. Balderdash. No way. Quite the contrary. The Kolle 37 bauspielplatz in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin is a wonderland. A place of imagination and exploration that [...]
February 18, 2010
Can we empower citizens by making the inordinately complicated rules and processes surrounding such everyday things as housing and street vending visually more clear?
January 31, 2010
Many of you may have heard of or seen the jaw dropping French sport, parkours (here). If you saw one of the more recent James Bond films, Casino Royale, then you’re in. All of that amazing, almost too-ridiculous-to-be-possible but true leaping, bounding and clamoring that occurred in the opening scene was parkours. And believe it [...]
Of the many wonderful things I have seen thus far in Chicago, one of my favorites is the work that Mejay Gula, Kelly Van Eaton and Charlie Vinz, are doing with Chicago high school students through the After School Matters (here) program. Last fall Mejay and Charlie worked with their students to design and build [...]
January 14, 2010
Last week Public Workshop had the great pleasure of spending time in Philadelphia talking to a number of different organizations and people about future collaborations and possibilities. Having helped start the Charter High School For Architecture And Design and taught at places such as the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is a city that is very [...]
You may or may not have noticed, through articles by Public Workshop (here) or via a steady rise in media attention, but playgrounds for the elderly are on the rise. This innovation started in Asia, particularly China, Japan and Singapore but thereafter spread to Spain, Germany and England. Some countries such as Germany are taking [...]
Can a massive foam sword fight in the crosswalk of a busy street change the street-use culture of a community? This Friday University of Texas School of Architecture students are hosting their once a semester Foam Sword Friday at 12.30 at the crosswalk on Guadalupe between 21st and 23rd Streets. How does it work? Simple, [...]
October 11, 2009
Low and behold, if you were watching CBS Sunday Morning today you may have notice that Mo Rocca did a piece on Tom Vanderbilt’s excellent book, Traffic and even spent a good deal of time hanging out in Hans Mondermans traffic circle in Drachten. It’s a pretty fluffy piece but cool all the same and [...]
July 29, 2010
exploring