built
Last night, a friend from out of town commented on his disorientation when exiting subway stations in New York City. Which way is North? It always takes a minute or two (or more) to find a street sign, landmark, or other orienting information. In some cases it means walking a whole city block to find out you’re heading in the wrong direction. I’ve lived here for 15 years and I’m still disoriented at far-flung exits where the streets all have names and no numbers.
In midtown they have do little kiosks at street level with maps to nearby landmarks. But this seems like overkill for mostly mixed and residential neighborhoods. So how hard would it be for the MTA to paint a little direction indicator on the pavement near each subway exit?
Hell, how hard would it be to take matters into our own hands? To start a guerilla wayfinding campaign?
To that end, I’ve posted a few free stencils here. I’ve tried to keep it in the MTA style — with the exception of the compass rose. (But then who doesn’t love a compass rose?)
Click the thumbnails below to download a 20KB PDF.
Update 3/7/06: I’ve deprecated the uptown and downtown stencils, since it occurs to me that this could cause some confusion with the subway lines themselves often referred to uptown or downtown lines.
Update 3/28/06: Using their own fancy, two-color stencil, someone’s taken it on!.
Build a Green Bakery. “When is a bakery not a bakery? When it’s a political statement, an architectural pioneer, and a bit of performance art, all wrapped in one — as is the case at a mysterious new East Village purveyor of cookies and croissants.... The walls are made from wheat and sunflower seed; the floor from a cork by-product. The paint is milk-based, and its pigment derived from beets. Tufts of denim insulation make a base for the bamboo counter, and the staff is clad in racy hemp-and-linen jackets.” The cookies are good, too.
Cooperative Housing for and by the Aging. “Opting for old age on their own terms, they were starting a new chapter in their lives as residents of Glacier Circle, the country’s first self-planned housing development for the elderly — a community they had conceived and designed themselves, right down to its purple gutters. Over the past five years, the residents of Glacier Circle have found and bought land together, hired an architect together, ironed out insurance together, lobbied for a zoning change together and existentially probed togetherness together.”
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A House for an Ecologist: A Design Ideas Competition. The AIA is sposoring a compeition to design a modest, sustainable house on the Potomac River. Entries will be judged on design excellence, celebration of place, respect for resources, and design process. (“How do innovative design methods promote great design? Collaborative and interdisciplinary teams are encouraged.”) Deadline for registration is March 17, 2006.
World Prison Population. (50KB PDF) by country, 2003. Though only 4% of the world’s population lived in the U.S. in 2003, the U.S. held 23% of the world’s prison population — more than any other nation.
Is it too easy for buildings to get certified as eco-friendly?. “Unlike other so-called green products... some green buildings are little more energy-efficient than traditional structures. Yet they manage to earn a coveted certification from the
U.S. Green Building Council, a leading, private environmental organization.... At issue is the Green Building Council’s [LEED] checklist system that certifies projects as green. Some critics say the system gives too much weight to certain easy tasks, while giving the same weight to much more expensive ones.”
Hemp for Houses. Building with compressed hemp boards and ‘hempcrete’ is a sustainable alternative to killing trees. A
2002 UK study found hemp homes use less energy to build, create less waste and take less fuel to heat, though cost about 10 percent more to build than conventional houses.
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5 March 2006 | LINK | Filed in
built, compass rose, guerilla wayfinding, mapping, nyc, stencils, subway
