Tokyo Kindergarten from the air. Photo: Kashiwa Sato
The best kindergarten you’ve ever seen:
At Fuji Kindergarten outside Tokyo, kids are encouraged to follow their impulses to run, climb, slide and play.
Their oval-shaped school, with a low round roof for infinite running games, is designed by Tokyo-based firm Tezuka Architects to dissolve boundaries and invite the outdoors inside.
“We had to build around the trees already there on the land. It wasn’t easy — we couldn’t cut the roots, which spread as wide as the tree crowns. We added these safety nets so the students wouldn’t fall through the holes around the trees,” says designer Takaharu Tezuka.
“But I know kids, and they love to play with nets. Whenever they see a hammock, they want to jump into it, to shake it. These were really just an excuse for me to give the kids another way to play.”
Read via the TED-Ed Blog how Tezuka built a school based on openness, community, and noise.
Washington Women’s March. Photo: Kamala Harris
Democracy Still Lives in Public Spaces:
In January more than 600 rallies attracted thousands of protesters marching in opposition to the agenda and rhetoric of President Donald Trump in 80 countries around the world.
Some 500,000 people turned out for the Women’s March in Washington, the unexpected numbers forcing organisers to abandon plans to march towards the White House.
Public transport was packed and Interim DC Police Chief Peter Newsham said, “The crowd stretches so far that there’s no room left to march.”
While President Trump protests about the media misrepresenting the popularity of his inauguration, those marching together in public spaces can see and feel the crowds, or lack of, for themselves.
Juliet Kahne, for the Project for Public Spaces, speaks about how public spaces serve democracy, in tandem with social media, when citizens need them most.
Red telephone boxes.
Seeing society in every bin and lamp post:
London’s street furniture design is a highly contested space. Lovers of classic styles have chained themselves to lamp posts threatened with replacement. Red K2 telephone boxes, post boxes, parking metres designed by Kenneth Grange from the sixties, even electrical junction boxes have been fought over, adopted by communities, placed in museums as objects of art.
Keith Bruce, in the Scotland Herald, talks with Dr Eleanor Herring from the Glasgow School of Art, about these surprising totems of British class struggle.
The Street Furniture Australia factory, in Regents Park, Western Sydney, is both a manufacturing hub and R&D studio for our Australian-designed and made street furniture products. We run fun and informative group events for customers throughout the year, to share how products are designed, tested and built, and the latest products and projects. Director of Tract Julie Lee said: “It was a great opportunity for our team to look behind the scenes and understand the innovation, research and climate positive outcomes Street Furniture Australia is focusing on. Thank you for having us!” Place Design Group Associate, Liam Isaksen, said: “The factory tour is a fun experience to learn about the design and manufacturing process of public furniture we use in landscape architecture design. Seeing the work behind the scenes and …
Did you catch these most-read case studies, furnishing tips, new product announcements and special industry events in your StreetChat updates in 2023? Each month our StreetChat enewsletter publishes new projects, products and trends from the public domain; subscribe to receive it in your inbox. 10. Which design firm can see Longhorn Cattle from their office window? 2 countries. 9 cities. 300 landscape architects. Street Furniture Australia and USA partner Spruce & Gander visited offices in Australia and Texas. There were key similarities and some notable standouts. 9. Jazz at The Mint: Product and Book Launch Sydney landscape architects gathered at the iconic Mint Courtyard to launch a design book by our founding directors Darrel Conybeare and Bill Morrison, and expansions to the Linea collection. 8. 2023 Good Cause Giveaway goes to …
Street Furniture Australia has designed and built prototype charging stands as part of a Transport for NSW program to deliver free phone chargers at 15 Sydney train stations. Developed by Street Furniture Australia’s inhouse industrial designers in collaboration with Transport for NSW, the prototypes offer wireless, USB-A and USB-C charging, and can power 7 devices at once. They were built at the Street Furniture Australia factory in Western Sydney. Two Power Spots are now installed at Liverpool and Campbelltown stations. The $1 million Power Spots Project rollout to 15 transport hubs including Bankstown, Hurstville, Lidcombe, Penrith, Wynyard, Central, Town Hall and Bondi Junction will be completed by late 2024. NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the Power Spots provide peace of mind: “In the modern world, our phones are our …
StreetChat interviews new AILA National President Linda Corkery. Linda is a highly respected landscape architect with a trifecta portfolio of responsibility: AILA National President, Associate Professor at UNSW and Director of Corkery Consulting. We chat about AILA, the future of cities and how women are faring in her industry. Can you tell us about your journey, from the US to Hong Kong, to Australia? My journey to landscape architecture started at Cornell University in upstate New York. At Cornell, I completed master degrees in urban and regional planning and in landscape architecture. There were a few international students in the program, including an Australian fellow I got to know quite well, Noel Corkery. I finished my studies and headed to Chicago, working first in an urban planning consultancy and then in …
Nicholas Camerer’s prize-winning Hatch Seat is the new centrepiece of a community garden for Karen refugees. Street Furniture Australia manufactured the seat as part of the Intergrain Urban Timber Project competition, which challenged graduate and student landscape architects to design a meaningful piece for the Historic Farm Precinct in Victoria. The resurrected kitchen garden is a place for Karen refugees from Burma to learn new skills and share their culture, the result of a volunteer program by Parks Victoria and Werribee Park in partnership with AMES (Adult Multicultural Education Services). Camerer’s design features red, white and blue panels to represent the colours of both the Karen and Australian flags. Robust timber cross beams double as a leaning rack for gardening tools when not in use as a seat. The landscape architect, from …
by Jason Packenham. Urban leaders are reimagining Australia’s future cities, starting with Streets 2.0 – a cross-disciplinary forum held in Sydney – with the conversation to continue in March at the Cities 4.0 Summit in Melbourne. With autonomous vehicles on the horizon, now is the time for such events. Provocative discussions at Streets 2.0 raised as many questions as answers. In continuing this provocation, this piece is as much a recap as it is a wondering of where to from here. What do we mean by the street? What role do streets play in our cities today? What do we want and need from them? Looking forward, what is their role in a future with autonomous vehicles? How do we achieve some of the grand visions of Streets 2.0? Are they possible? …
