community design - always current link

we have an AWESOMELY MOTIVATED, organized community group.

they have the most up to date drawings and information here - http://www.sbpbcivic.org/brighampark/

community design - more press

http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/

http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2008/07/24/bay_news/news/bay_news_newslocalkidsh07242008.txt

community design - press

This report came after our first community workshop, which the reporter attended.

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community design - mtg II

Despite the threat of torrential rains, 11 dedicated community members attended our second design workshop for Brigham Street Park Community Design Project. We all introduced ourselves at the beginning of the meeting and said where we were from. This helped the group get to know each other, as they will be the tireless work-horse champions of this project who will work to get it built.

I started the presentation with a board that depicted my synthesis of the community surveying effort. I explained the methodology and the demographics of all participants. We had 81 participants total, which were surveyed through four different means: 1) the first community workshop, which had four interactive information gathering stations, 2) three school workshops where we met with three classes of fourth and fifth grade students from the area, 3) street surveying at the site and along the main avenue and 4) online surveying through the Sheepshead Bay / Plumb Beach Civic Association park project web site. We got a good cross-section of age and ethnic groups.

Secondly, I explained my design process. I told them it was my goal to meld the Community Priorities with the Site's Priorities, the latter of which were learned from the site analysis I had done. This process then informed the critical issues that the site had to confront and what the ecological, social and cultural program should be.

I presented two conceptual designs that I felt addressed different aspects of the priorities determined. My strategy was to make the concepts very different with regards to particular subject matters, so that their feedback would provide more specific direction. For example, one design was active recreation heavy and the other was passive recreation heavy. They chose the design that was passive recreation heavy and this helped me refine the argument for that design through the schematic design process.

After I presented, the discussion began. Gene, our community leader, suggested we take a vote on which they preferred, so that our discussion could be tailored to moving a particular design forward. They unanimously voted for the Brigham Boardwalk / Storm Water Park concept. The community members shared what they felt was working in the design and what they were still unconvinced about. As we discussed refinements, they picked the two aspects that they liked from the City Meets Nature concept.



It was an awesome learning experience and very gratifying to work with them in pushing the design forward. They continue to impress me with their dedication and their sophistication in the kind of space they'd like.

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Detroit airport - indoor tram

community design - school workshops

Today we held a school workshop with a mix of area 4th and 5th graders who are attending summer school at PS 52, Sheepshead Bay Elementary. A mix of area school teachers and volunteer parent teacher assistants were also on hand to help with the workshop and give their input.

First, we gave the students a beach ecology lesson and tried to have them make the connection between the lesson and Plumb Beach, which starts on the eastern border of our park site. Jon, who is heading up the ecological restoration independent study for Plumb Beach, led the lesson, showing the class an actual horseshoe crab shell, sea lettuce algae and shells of clams and oysters. Then he asked them to draw a day at the beach. What we hoped to learn from their drawings is what they value at the beach. We also wanted to see if we could incorporate their images into a customized fence for the park site. Above is a great image of the plentiful sea lettuce that lives in Sheepshead Bay and our larger bay system, Jamaica Bay.

In our second activity, we talked to students about landscape architecture and what to think about when designing a park. We talked about determining program, the size of each program and to think practically about where to place each program. We also talked about considering the different users of the park. Next I showed them four boards full of images of creative precedents to get them to think outside of the box of the typical playground parks that they are used to. Lastly we used the guidelines and the precedents we just learned about to draw our park design on a bird's eye view photograph of the site. Then the youth broke up into groups of three to work on their own design. At the very end, each group presented their work.

As the two images above show, the youth showed a wealth of ideas, yet, the warped sense of space of the bird's eye view photograph made the exercise tricky in its usefulness. The group that designed the park above were very sophisticated in their sense of space, and actually tipped me off to the challenge of using a perspectival image as a base for designing. They used the perspectival image, but also supplemented it with a plan view, which they called their detail plan. So cool!

Luckily we had another activity to replace the design-a-park activity. For the next two sessions we learned about budgeting and prioritizing program with the Brigham Bux activity.

Again we talked about precedents and program and users to set up our brainstorming of what the youth thought should be in the park. After we brainstormed, we voted on the top five. We then labeled buckets with the top five picks. We gave the youth a set amount of Brigham Bux and asked them to pretend they were in charge of the budget and to spend their money based on what they wanted most. We counted the votes and then ordered the buckets from most wanted to least. The last class was really cute and clapped after the summation was announced for each bucket. They were ultimately happy to see that the pool was the most wanted park feature. At the end I did a quick summary, explaining how I would think about the input and prioritizing they just gave me.

It was a great day. It was fun and very helpful. We learned that the youth really want a pool, creative play area (like rock climbing and rubber surfaces to bounce on), food stand and benches.

Below is my temporary id that I have to get every day to enter the building where I work. It's a waste of sticker paper, but it's also an interesting marker of my daily moods. Today I look like a happy busy bee. Another fun and successful community workshop!

community design - community workshop I

There are some of the lovely community members drawing their ideas on a photograph of the site!

COMMUNITY WORKSHOP I - At this point in the evening we had four activity stations set up in two rooms. You are seeing the Draw-a-Park station. In retrospect, I think I would have explained this activity a little better since most people wrote in text instead of drawing. The interesting thing was that they did locate the text spatially. But perhaps it would have been a better experience for them, if I had shown some examples of plans and sketch plans.

community design - brigham street park - sheepshead bay bk

so this summer i am a design fellow for new yorkers for parks and the awesome community of sheepshead bay brooklyn. stay tuned for the "process" of community design from this newbie's perspective.

Remember FRESHSCAPERS nobody's purrrrfect

Emergent Vegetation in Prospect Park

a lot of money and energy goes into preserving beautiful buildings and landscapes that also have historical meaning. sustainable design needs to be beautiful in order to be perpetuated. in the design world, a convincing argument bridges aesthetics with function.