Sustainable South Bronx
Sustainable South Bronx (SSBX) invited the Pratt Design Incubator to partner with the community members to create a series of street furniture for the South Bronx Lafayette Avenue Greenway project. Starting in July, a group of designer, 6 Industrial Design alumni from Pratt, an architecture alumni (University of Ryerson), an environmental designers (Ontario College of Art and Design) and an urban planner (Institute Without Boarders), joined together for an intensive design process.
To create functional and relevant objects for the community, the designers participated in a workshop with local youth from SSBX and The Point community group and they also participated in the community’s yearly Block Party on July 18th. At both of these events, the designers created a dialog and activities with the community to learn about how they envision their street and to understand the needs of the community.
Over the series of weeks, the designers started with research, concept development, “soft” prototypes and final concept development. Throughout the design process a film is being produced to follow the process ‘over the shoulder’ of the designers. For the final presentation, the designers presented a series of different concept to SSBX, The Point and community members to get feedback on how to refine and solidifying ideas. Currently, the designers are working to refine their concepts based on the feedback of the community and create prototypes. Documentation of this projects in the form of drawings, photographs, prototypes and video will be exhibited in the Pratt Manhattan gallery from September 25th through November 7th.