What if all the construction in NYC was for experimental education facilities?
Community Stimulus Package: Education in Frozen Spaces
Frozen Space: A space that has lost its function or purpose due to the global financial crisis—an empty office space, an abandoned construction site, a brown or green zoned building or property.
When there is a depression, there is a space created. As construction sites and office buildings are abandoned, many voids are left in the ground. It is time to find a way to fill these potholes/blackholes/recessions with ideas. In order to invert the concave state of things, I propose that we build an oppositional idealistic education structure within frozen space. From within this short depression, we can learn how to use what we have to build a more reliable future using education and experimentation as the scaffolding. We will use construction sites for constructive thinking about the way things are, and how to make them the way we want them to be.
The plan: Starting in March 2009 I will travel to three cities plus NYC, where I will locate a local frozen space that I can repurpose as a community redesign center. The center will be a temporary found or built structure in each town that will act as a design laboratory where the public will be invited to come and reimagine the fortune of the community by suggesting a practical form and use for the empty place. Using architectural modeling as the principal method for empowering individuals, community members will be led to develop macquettes and drawings for the repurposing of frozen spaces in their town so to stimulate their community. There will also be workshops from local community members with expertise in handicrafts and other practices that maximize resources in creative ways to support a lifestyle that can withstand economic fluctuations.
