Street Seats was a class-wide project for a class called Design Build, spring semester of my junior year.
Design Build: Street Seats worked in partnership with the Department of Transportation and their Street Seat program. This program creates public seating areas in NYC in the place of a couple of parking spaces along the sidewalk. As a class we designed multiple prototypes, researched materials and plants, and followed through with one design that we built in front of the University Center on 13th Street. The final design incorporated large cardboard tubing and plants on as many surfaces as possible. With a final design in the works, the class was broken into small groups with assigned jobs, which included plan drawings, budgeting, plants, and resources. Coordination of the groups was rather difficult. The entire class participated in the construction of Street Seats. We used the CNC machines, cut out wood pieces, screwed many pieces together, and placed a great deal of tubes on our platform. The last step was to fill the street seats with vegetation. The completed seating area was a great success, always filled with students and New Yorkers alike. This project taught about working with a client and having real world deadlines.