Children in the City

It is my passionate belief that to include children into everyday society helps take enormous pressure off parents. I’m inspired by Gil Penalosa’s vision of improving cities for children which helps to “create more vibrant, healthy and equitable communities.” (880Cities.org)

This project incorporates safety, movement, education and joy to promote the inclusiveness of children in the CBD.

Using the slope of the street, a boardwalk that starts with a wave ramp guides people into Fort Lane. Vehicles are removed for pedestrian safety and colourful lighting makes the space feel more inviting at night time. Joy is found in symmetry, abundance and bright colours which can be found in the centre seating/stage/jumping circles. The surfaces and materials used reminds people that Fort Lane is reclaimed from the sea.

Fort Lane has become a mini oasis in the city for children. The space has become more playful, active, safe and educational. Children now feel welcome here, even into the evening. The shells, seating and swings are installed around the entrances to eateries. By using ambiguous sculptures and play spaces we encourage unpredictable and innovative play. There is plenty of room for active pursuits like biking, scooting and kicking a ball around.

People can return again and again to experience Fort Lane, with events that bring people back to enjoy the atmosphere and gatherings. This proposal leaves the city with an inclusive and welcoming space that can be used and enjoyed by many both day and night.

Events in Fort Lane

Children feel welcome day and night

Realistic Surfaces

I’ve debated over the materials to make my shell sculptures and driftwood swings out of. Feedback has been to make the shells more abstract, and Rafik has made me reason why or why not choose to use actual driftwood for my swings. So. My gut feeling is to make them look realistic. The shells that look real but are larger than life give a feeling of giants - a large, in your face reminder that this was home to them before us. The driftwood swings are timber made to imitate real driftwood. This is mainly because it would be safer and stronger, and possibly easier than finding enough large pieces of real driftwood to use. And can you even steal driftwood from a beach for a public project???

Play and Eat at Fort Lane Brochure

I’ve made a brochure to go with my project. This is to advertise the new playspace at Fort Lane and would be found at Britomart and also other Auckland Council places such as libraries. The reasoning behind the map showing places to buy food is to encourage people to bring their children to the area to eat together and stay longer. As a parent it is always good to be prepared especially when it comes to food!

Children in the City: An Urban Playscape in Fort Lane

Today I handed in my exegesis about my project, Children in the City. 

Conclusion

Fort Lane has become a mini oasis in the city for children. The space has become more playful, active, safe and educational. Children now feel welcome here, even into the evening. The shells, seating and swings are installed around the entrances to eateries. By using ambiguous sculptures and play spaces we encourage unpredictable and innovative play. There is plenty of room for active pursuits like biking, scooting and kicking a ball around.

People can return again and again to experience Fort Lane, with events that bring people back to enjoy the atmosphere and gatherings. This proposal answers my initial design questions and leaves the city with an inclusive and welcoming space that can be used and enjoyed by many both day and night.

Feedback from Rafik

I have started to layout my final presentation, which will be printed on a large 740mm wide by 1800mm tall page. I printed onto A4 pages at full size to get an idea of the scale of my images and check the resolution. Rafik critiqued my storyboard images and layout design and gave me some good ideas and some things to think about.

Storyboard: 5 images

I have been working on the style of my presentation images. I like the montage image I made back in week 1 of the site sequence and I had good feedback about it from others so I’m going to use that as my inspiration. Using photos from the site as the background and my children showing movement and play to explore my designs in the site.

My storyboard images are of my mini sites down the lane. The main image is a perspective through the lane showing several of my design installations with kids playing in the space. The other four images are close ups of each mini site design: the entrance wave boardwalk, shell sculptures, tree stumps and driftwood swings.

I drew the designs in Rhino then imported them into Photoshop in several layers including photos from the site and photos of children playing. I can then play with opacity and colours of each layer individually to create different results.

Industry Critic: Heather CrawCour

We had the good fortune to spend some one on one time with a spatial designer. We were organised into groups of students that have similar project intentions and we all explained our projects and received some very valuable feedback from people working in the industry. Heather CrawCour was our industry expert. She is a spatial analyst working at Auckland Council so has a good understanding of the area and her expertise is in working with large amounts of data and maps.

This chat was so valuable, both for our current project ideas and also to see how one uses this design degree in the real working world. The key message Heather had for us is to be clear on what is our MAIN IDEA or FEELING… my main aim is to create a feeling of inclusion for children in the city. We need a specific design intention and to think about what is our measure of success.

More specific feedback about my Fort Lane project:

Crit and Feedback

This week we presented our Fort Lane designs with a 3 minute speech to the class, lecturers, post grad students and designers working in film and architecture. Feedback from these crits is so valuable and it is really interesting to get an outsiders perspective on our ideas.

Positive Feedback:

The montage image of kids moving down Fort Lane is very successful in portraying movement and play.

The social mandate of public spaces is very important to explore (similar theme to Dottie’s project).

Points to Ponder:

Do I want to integrate children and adults in the space or keep them separate (as the skypath currently separates people)? How does the skypath interact with the play space below? Is this a voyeuristic experience of children?

Are there spaces to pause or is it just for moving through the lane? It is very movement based, what about shopping and pause?

Think about entrance, threshold, passage.

Words to Work With:

Voyeuristic

Temporal

Integration / Separation

Conclusion:

I need to work on the skypath idea. I had thought it a good way to represent the presence of humans by using man-made materials and providing a cinematic view of the movement below. However, the critics are right when they say it still segregates children and adults, and the whole concept of my project is to integrate children into an currently adult space.

The idea of pause is important as well, now the project is all about movement with no space for lingering. I had thought to put a picnic space in Fort St to pause, rest, eat and interact with others. Perhaps I should put something like that into Fort Lane.

Mid Semester Pinup

The new Fort Lane is about bringing children into the city and helping families feel a sense of belonging and safety. The aim is to create opportunities for fun, movement and social interaction. Inspired by nature and cinema, there are interesting historical and educational aspects to the journey down Fort Lane. By using ambiguous sculptures and play spaces we encourage unpredictable and innovative play. There is plenty of room for active pursuits like biking, scooting and kicking a ball around. By building an urban play space in a previously adult location we are helping to bring together children with regular adults in public – we are including everybody in the space, it is not a closed off playground nor just a thoroughfare for commuters and café users.

The design questions I am asking are: • How can we use design to entice families into the CBD? • How can we bring fun into an inner-city service lane? • How can we design public spaces for more personal interaction?

3d Model: Wave Ramp

The wave ramp at each end of Fort Lane highlights natures pull of the reclaimed land. There is also plenty of space of active play.

3d Model: Rainbow Poles

Randomly spaced and angled rainbow jetty posts encourages unpredictable and creative play. The bright colours and abundance represent joy.

3d Model: Shells

Large sculptural shell installation - representing the ocean that was and providing unique and dynamic play opportunities

3d Model: Enter the site

View of the entry to Fort Lane from Custom St East down the wave ramp

3d Model: Overview

The glass skypath overlooks the beach inspired urban play space, giving a cinematic view of spontaneous movement in the lane