Initial breif: “To design a Functional Public Domain Installation”. This was an open brief where the context for this work would need to be established. This functional public domain installation could include park furniture, stand-alone fun exercise products, mid-market street furniture or school playground areas.
Developed Brief : To design a public domain installation that promotes socialising in urban environments. This installation should be designed to accommodate all age groups in the community and should consider size for implementation in city locations.
Outcome : Grow is a social and educational seating area designed for urban locations to promote healthy eating and socialising through community growing. Grow's large central planting spaces allows interaction for both adults and children and is surrounded by an arrangement of seating, work tables and access to gardening tool storage for the community. Recycled plastics have been used to create the outer shell and central growing planters of the product, these large panels are fixed in place using an inner steel skeleton structure. Grow aims to use reduce the carbon footprint of urban environments, looking at local food production for communities and helping to reduce transportation of food.
In 2013 urban areas covered 2% of the planet’s land area; this has been predicted to increase to 10% by 2030. With city populations constantly increasing the question of how can we make cities suitable has to be raised. The infographic on the left page shows data collated from the Food, Fuel, and Freeways study that was conducted in Chicago USA. This data tracks how many miles food travels to our cities, comparing two sources of food production. The top bar of each category shows how many miles food has travelled to the Plaza Farmers Market, a local farmers’ market found in Chicago. The lower bar shows the amount of miles cheap food, produced on super farms, has to travel to be sold at Chicago’s wholesale food market, Terminal Market. This graph shows the shocking truth about where our food comes from and how many miles it travels to our cities. This data outlines the importance of community growing in our own cities and encouraging urban farming.
Seating design : The unique bench design uses recycled plastic mesh stretched over a stainless steel frame to create a comfortable and practical bench designed specifically for outdoor use. The implementation of mesh seating eliminates water pooling on the surface of the seat, allowing this public seating area to be used frequently all year round.
Design Proposal
