BRIDGE 4- Final interventions- Jackson Heights

BRIDGE 4- Final interventions- Jackson Heights

Research

  • Many different cultures and ethnic groups in the neighborhood
  • Few public parks – many private gardens
  • Few recreational spaces for the community
  • The neighborhood is mainly small businesses and it’s known for having a lot of street vendors on the streets
  • Feeling of people being work-oriented and individualistic

Problems

  • Lack of public spaces for the community to interact in
  • Little sidewalk life: a feeling of unsafety around the community. Contradictory with the life Latin people had in their home countries
  • The different communities don’t have much interaction –>  geographical divisions
  • Street vendors provide a great opportunity for people to interact with each other, but they have more and more restrictions each day to be on the streets and not a proper space to do it

Project Pitch

In a way to provide opportunities for the community to interact and have more sidewalk life, my project is to create a type of collapsible table for street vendors to use on the street. Since the lack of space is a problem around the streets of Jackson Heights, this table will fold into a compartment in the floor, using space efficiently when no one is using it. These tables will be scattered around the main area where communities mix: Roosevelt Avenue.

Street vendors

I think that street vendors give a great opportunity for people to have more sidewalk life in Jackson Heights, making the different communities interact more and spreading the feeling of safety around the streets of the neighborhood. Having more public characters like Maria “The oblea Lady” that I met when I was doing interviews, is very important since they have a specific role in the community: being a shared point of trust among people, and giving strangers something to gather around, strengthening the community’s sense of identity.

For these reasons, I decided to design a project that could benefit street vendors and improve the neighborhood’s sidewalk life. I wanted to work with giving them a proper space they could use to work without having to look for one in the crowded streets, and also something that would have efficient use of this space since it’s not something that Jackson Heights can spear. My final design is a collapsible table that fits into a chamber in the floor: when it’s closed and no one’s using it it would just look like a floor hatch, and when it’s open and its different components are pulled up, it will be a functional surface to put produce, foods, craftwork, books, and different products, with a type of canopy to protect from the rain and the sun.

Moodboard

To get inspiration I looked at a lot of collapsible and modular furniture, since they use space in an efficient way, just like I wanted for my design

Location 

I wanted the tables to be located around the main area where street vendors usually are but spread out along Roosevelt Avenue’s perpendicular streets.

Materials

For the materials, I needed to choose waterproof or water-resistant things since they will be on the outside all year long. I chose aluminum as the main component since it’s light, it will allow for the table to be lifted easily off the hatch.

Sketches

Initial ideas on the shape and direction of the legs of the table.

 

Technical drawings

Final design

3d Model

 

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How it works

 

 

Styling picture

Final 3d Rendering

Reflection

Making this project during quarantine at home was a big challenge. The hardest part for me was not having many materials to work with and not being able to go back to Jackson Heights to do more research, talk to people, and pick the locations for the design. Despite all of that I really liked the result and I was very happy with the whole process of making the model.

I had a hard time making the sketches because it was difficult to imagine how the table will fold into the floor without being able to play around with ti so I ended up making a model out of paper. It was very interesting to figure out where it should bend and the exact measurements it needed to be to fit in the floor and for the canopy to come from below the table and extend up to cover it. It took a lot of thinking and trial and error to come up with the exact design and I really liked that whole process of figuring it out.

Altogether I really enjoyed doing this project and it was a nice way to end the semester and conclude all the work we’ve done with our neighborhoods.

 

Bibliography

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