Streetscaping

Well designed streetscaping can humanize and animate public spaces, by providing eyes on the street, accessibility and information. In our streetscaping challenge, we asked the kids to design something to improve the sidewalk.

Many of our students thought about being on the move. They didn't just design transit stops, they designed whole transit hubs.

For our city by the lake, this team designed a transit stop for a hovercraft.  

Tired of waiting for the bus? Then ascend the striped observation tower (in an internal elevator), so you can see if it's coming. Want a thrilling way to get on the bus? Cross the well lit street to the roller coaster ramp. Make sure not to wear your seat belt and you'll be flung from the coaster into the waiting bus. Riding the Rocket has never been this exciting (and possibly scary) before!

This transit stop had a kind of fairground quality to it.  Passengers wait for the bus on the elevated orange disc (seated on comfortable cushions).  While you're waiting the disc gently rotates, giving you a circular view of the city and its goings on. When the bus arrives, sensors on the street trigger the disc to stop moving and a ramp (lowered from the disc), allows passengers to embark.

In these two futuristic looking transit hubs, waiting passengers have the option of hanging out inside a gridded shelter with moulded plastic seating and a modular cafe table. In one design (top) the dimpled roof is retractable to let in natural light into the shelter in dry weather and a slatted fence adds security. In the other design (bottom), the roof is transparent so that "you can see the sky and the bottom of the streetcars up above".  The roof is engineered with steel girders in an attractive criss-crossed pattern. Passengers can use a ramp to get to streetcars arriving up top. 

The design above is a multifunctional sidewalk hub. It is a bike rack (clear stand on left) and also a safety unit. In an emergency, you can use the shield (tube and board) the mallet (white) or the night stick to defend yourself.  Careful construction went into this neat unit. Next design step is to figure out how to restrict access to just the good guys…

...and in case anyone else noticed snowflakes this morning, how about a sidewalk sauna?