File Under – NASTY

I would bet the same is true for the Millenium Park fountain in Chicago.  It’s a very popular attraction and on hot scorching days like today I would bet the place is packed with adults and kids. 

Reminds me of a paper I did in grad school about suvbversive uses of the landscape.  One point I argued is that a designer can never know, or plan for, all the end users of a work of landscape design.  At the time I was exploring gender politics as they specifically relate to gay men.  UVA had a colloquium series on queer studies, Aaron Betsky had just published Queer Space: Architecture and Same Sex Desire and my studio project with Beth Meyer was a bathhouse…the stars aligned I guess…LOL.  Julie Bargeman even took us to a noted public park used as a cruising grounds for gay men.  When we noted that there were so many men waiting in cars at the park Julie responded “Look….the landscape is so poorly designed they are afraid to get out of their cars.”  She was serious…and oh so very clueless (which proved an argument in my paper actually).  In the end, the paper developed into a discussion about public sex and how it can be viewed as an act of political protest and rebellion.  Such an act charges a space with meaning and memory.  These spaces become monuments to “the other”…”the outsider”….”the outlaw”…”the profain”.  As such they help develop specialized and personal world views and identities.  You are either included, or you are excluded (and this applies to both the majority user and the minority user).

While my example was meant to titilate and provoke (surprising for me I know), and was part of my own coming out process, other groups were exploring their identites and how they are tied to the built environment.  Craig Barton in the Architecture Department was exploring the black experience in the United States.  Given restrictions on the number of blacks gathering in one place at one time in the historic south (for fear of violence and uprising), churches and street spaces became important meeting grounds and took on important spatial configurations.  Daphne Spain in the Architectural History Department was studying the space of women in early American homes (kitchen spaces in indigenous and colonial dwellings) and how those spaces developed through the minority experience.

Now my initial comments might sound like a digression, but I would argue that the acts described may speak to the plight of the homeless or mentally disturbed.  I was delighted to hear Laurie Olin speak about a project in New York (Columbus Circle).  When asked how he dealt with the “problem” of homeless people – particularly the “problem” of homeless people sleeping on gorgeously designed park benches – Olin basically replied “Look, they are our clients too.  If we claim, as a profession, that we are making the world a better place through thoughtful design we need to account for and design for them.” (I paraphrase) 

Perhaps the deliciously subverssive acts occuring in New London have a deeper meaning…or maybe the Parade just needs more public restrooms, safe places for people to shower and a first aid station (I mean really…Really?…People are getting cut and washing wounds out in a public fountain?…What is this gang land USA?…LOL)

Do you mean plants?

…in that respect the plaza appears totally barren.  It’s a shame because I used to be in that plaza quite often.  While the previous design seemed seperated from it’s context yet softened by plants, the current design seems cold and off-putting.

I suggest reading Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind and I hope you never end up homeless.

What happened to survival of the fittest?  Nanny state is wrong, smacking gently little children who go near the water is good and zapping with a tazer all polluters is fine – in fact, 10,000 volts in a capacitor activated by a wire mesh on the bottom of the pool would be fine.  You just load the dead winos on a cart each morning and turn the power off for the busy part of the day..  It wouldn’t take many mornings to have zero winos.  I have my tongue in my cheek but am not sure it is very far in. 

Yeah, Irvine California has virtually no homeless because they don’t tolerate them. Laguna Beach, an arguably nicer area 10 minutes away, feeds and shelters the homeless and has a serious problem with drugs, theft and violence. Coincidence? I think not.