La Isla |
Panama City, Panama
|
Problem
How can citizens efficiently re-engage the parts of their neighborhood, like big traffic islands, that are abrupt and obsolete design elements providing no added value to the neighborhood's image and physical geography? |
Solution
Re-engage the traffic island by re-imagining it as a colorful and useful public amenity that invites residents to appropriate that space as a positive part of their neighborhood, including mix-use designations to urban public infrastructure. |
Description
Guatemala City-based collective Buro de Intervenciones Publicas used off-the-shelve and commonly used materials to paint with bright and pleasant colors the steps of a concrete landing in an obsolete traffic island in Panama City's historic district. The project was done for the MACRO Festival, which sought to bring together the arts, music, and fashion as relevant development in the formation of ideas, vision and concepts.
The simple and rational component of this intervention comments on the idea that small changes that citizens can start to make in their experience of the city can create big changes tied to community, social and cultural exchange and a better quality of life in the city. Instead of being a concrete eyesore serving an auto-oriented purpose, the collective painted the benches, hung hammocks, and installed various bird houses to re-engage the space and appropriate it once again as part of the neighborhood. |
⌚
$ ☺ ჻ ⌨ ☆ |
██ ██
██ Panama City Government, Casco Antiguo Neighborhood, MACRO Festival, Bureau of Public Interventions (BIP), community residents, pedestrians. Social: creates more opportunities to experience the city and public spaces that add quality to life in the city Low cost paint makes traffic island a destination and a public space. Changes the role of traffic-oriented development. |
Benefits
Beautification of the city. Re-engages the street and the traffic island as a relevant space in the city available for the public use. Redefine transportation infrastructure as part of the social agenda of the city . Gives pedestrians and neighborhood residents a new space. Low cost, high impact. Instills pride in the neighborhood. |
Negatives
Urban intervention does not address broader issues of pedestrian accessibility and reduction of car use. No physical change in the space, still a traffic island |
Links
http://elbipbip.com/la-isla
http://elbipbip.com/la-isla