#public interfaces

In my Public Interfaces course, we were tasked with situating one of our previous projects in the New York City subway system. I chose to blend two concepts: Community Networks and Design Research. The result is a concept for how to integrate mesh networks in the subway system, and the three goals those networks can serve: 

Citizen's Watch Portal

Crowdsourced Design Research 

Open Social Channel

For my physical computing class last year, I worked on a project that aimed to make light therapy easier and more accessible for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Now for a quick assignment in my Public Interfaces class, I wondered how I might bring this concept to the public transportation space, and if lighting design could help the community-at-large get better sleep. Inspired by the simplicity of the flux desktop app that transforms your screen lighting into orange hues at night, I thought this model could apply to subway lighting as well.

Curious about how an environmental change like this might impact the well-being of a lot of people at once, I went a step further and asked what other ways the design of public transit could help shape public health. I used stress as a lens for 3 design intervention concepts.

Oldenburg's 1997 article "Our Vanishing Third Places" is an interesting take on the function of public space, especially as seen through the lens of the pre-social media era. In it, Oldenburg coined the term "third places" by considering the home as the universal "first place" and the workplace as a "second place." "Third places," he wrote, "lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. [They] are nothing more than informal public gathering places."

The article predates Facebook and the slew of social "spaces" that have emerged across the internet over the past decade. These digital third places fill some of the needs Oldenburg describes throughout the article — perhaps most notably, the need of meeting points for people who share special interests. As Oldenburg harkened back to historic third places like colonial taverns, candy stores, soda fountains and beyond, it became clear that social media filled this need in a unique, unprecedented and important way. It expanded the "local" to what Marshall McLuhan aptly predicted would become a global village, fostering all kinds of new connections between people with interests, lifestyles, needs, identities that could not have been accommodated in a corner store. It continues to mobilize these people, giving them the gifts of like-minded communities, a platform for sharing their stories, a network of support, and in some cases, a reminder that it gets better.

While this is all fine and dandy, it's worth nothing that these digital third places don't completely fulfill Oldenburg's vision. Many have argued that the lack of physical co-presence is a veiled sort of isolationism, Facebook is commonly critiqued as making the notion of friendship superficial and facilitating idealized presentations of life that makes people sad.

"... the third place is the social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace...

Oldenburg calls one's "first place" the home and those that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is the intentionality of seeking them out as vital to current societal needs..."

I lived in NY for 6 years. To be honest, this "third place" that Oldenburg calls is everywhere in New York. It's easy to find a place where I can hang out with people around my neighborhood or anywhere else in New York. However, I often find it difficult to engage these places. It takes time for me to be comfortable at a place or a neighborhood.

"Time" = "Trust".

There is so much going on in NYC, people are moving out / in to places, restaurants / stores open or close, and etc...  There isn't an actual Home / "first place" for many New Yorkers. So it is hard to build trust with each other or to be attached to anything because we don't know how long it will last.   That's why some people think New Yorkers are cold and have careless about anything. ( It's not 100% true tho)

I lived in Bedford (Brooklyn) for 5 years, and I loved the neighborhood. I felt comfortable with it because most of my classmates from my college (Pratt) lived in the area too.  I remember there was a cafe/restaurant right around the corner where I used to lived. My friends and I got to meet people because we all go there regularly. That cafe was the "third place" in the neighborhood. Everyone knows about it and loves just hang out there. But the owner had to closed the cafe because the landlord decide to sell the building for a better profit. The real-estate of the neighborhood was getting higher because people from the city were in because for the same reason. Then I moved to Astoria a year after that which I enjoy it a lot because it's a strong Greeks family community neighborhood. Everyone seems to know each other and friendly to each other. 

"...the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a “place on the corner,” real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile."