StreeTALK_adigard-mcshane_M-A-D

6 StreeTALK: WHAT IS YOUR DREAM CITY?*
StreeTALK is a participatory installation of
commentaries and drawings on the future of
the city. A street corner is re-staged as a
space for creative placemaking for residents,
visitors, commuters, or students passing by.
Framed by a basic set of rules, they are
invited to address the simple prompt, what is
your dream city? The ensuing responses become
a conversation rooted in the intersection of
thoughts, ideas, concerns and suggestions. The
street corner turns into a lively universal
agora. The final piece stands as an information
tree and an unpredictable collective artwork in
its own right.
Today more than ever, the merging of walls,
people and play is an invitation for our
imagination to further revitalize the urban
fabric and make it more organic.
StreeTALK is also a design experiment in
which we are exploring the dynamics of creative
control. In both city planning and individual
creations, we enter into a set of relationships
where the contextual demands are often too
great to allow the free flow of solutions.
Cities can be as inherently dysfunctional as
they appear extraordinary. Paradoxically, it
may be the very nature of these tensions that
promotes vitality in our cities.
The rules of making and usage are
contingent on conditions that must be
controlled by a collective body. Somewhere
between order and entropy everyone has an
opportunity to find a place of coherence.