SLOWSPACE
HKS Design Fellowship: Jiming Chen, Zachary Orig, Joey Tan
Downtown Dallas is experiencing a renaissance of growth, yet many of the city’s valuable public spaces are disconnected and disengaged from the community. SLOWSPACE aims to create a series of playful learning spaces for children that are highly integrated with people’s daily routine. This project reclaims existing, underutilized public spaces — unpopulated outdoor plazas, underused parks, empty spaces in front of skyscrapers — to bring slowness into the superblock and make journeys more lively and fun. Using a coloring book as a design tool, kids and parents are given the opportunity to create their own public space with a kit of parts made of a variety of modular, flexible, and transformable structural elements, as well as different urban furniture and ground material variations. The goal is to form an urban continuity through collective agency over the creation of public space.
Jury Commentary:
“Great interpretation of ‘urban acupuncture.’ Engaging the community by asking children and their parents to draw their ideas about their city is such a creative, direct way to promote awareness of the city and its obligation to provide delightful, usable spaces for people.”