The "Bamboo Fever" project is apart of NYC's Department of Transportation Street Seats program, where funds are given to design, build, and install a seating area in a designated parklet for 6 months. A parklet is a sidewalk extension that provides more space and amenities for people using the street. With the support of DOT, The New School and Tishman Environmental Design Center, our team had a budget of $12,500.
Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on earth and produces little waste when harvested. When used correctly it has impressive structural properties that can rival those of concrete and steel. Our team was inspired by the use of the resilient grass in building construction across many regions in Asia and used the project as a way to promote the use of bamboo. In addition, we decided to use other sustainable materials. These included solar powered lights and planters made from recycled plastic water bottles.
Our bamboo is one of the 7 species that can be used for construction, and grows solidly rather than hollow like we are used to seeing in typical species. The solid cane allowed us to have enough structural properties to integrate benches into the wall of the seating area in a cantilever style. This maximized our seating spaces twice fold and encourages a closer relationship between people and materiality.
We incorporated a traditional binding technique by using red paracord to tie and cover the screws that were used to put the benches together. This prevented people from seeing the screws as well as displaying an age old technique that is used with bamboo frequently in many parts of the world.
We integrated 15 lights and powered them through 12 solar panels that were donated from Voltaic Systems, a leading company in solar technology and portable charging. The lighting was strategically placed in planters throughout the seating area and lights up at night until 11pm. We used an Arduino to program the lights and configure on/off times.
The team that constructed this was 15 Parsons students from different programs ranging from Industrial, Product, Lighting, Integrative and Architecture. It was a collaborative effort in both the design and build stages.
We began designing in February of 2017 with a plan to install on Earth Day (April 22, 2017). We met our deadline and used the seating area as a starting point for people going to the 2017 Climate march.
Bees give us 1/3 of our food, they are a keystone species to our ecosystems, and without them our environment would shut down. This project aims to assist bees by helping provide habitats that are natural to them in urban environments.
After learning about the sharp decline in the world's bee populations, I wanted to create something that could be both beneficial to the bees but also to humans as well. By providing habitats to bees, their stress levels decrease and gives them more time to focus on pollination rather than finding resources to build a habitat.
These prototypes are an example for what could be a modular system of stackable and additive beehives- easily transformable to whatever form the habitat needs to take in the urban environment. The honeycomb sleeve was created and rendered through Grasshopper and Rhino, then Photoshopped into a park space as an example of a potential installation.
Back in the 70s, guerilla gardeners would go around the city and throw seed bombs into empty lots in order to encourage the growth of flora and fauna. They were pioneers in showing urban planners and then general public how important it was to have green spaces in the city.
Still today, urban dwellers are often disconnected from nature due to their surroundings of what is mostly concrete and glass. Earth Pills are meant to be a modern taking to Guerilla Gardening- they are gelatin capsules stuffed with seeds and serve as medicine for the Earth. This project is apart of the larger installation "FENCED IN: Finding Green Spaces in a Grey Landscape".
The seeds in the Earth Pill package will grow plants that are native to the northeastern region. These plants are also known for helping mitigate the soil and provide resources for local insect populations.
This system aims to connect the urban dweller to the local green spaces around them and breach the barrier between sidewalk and grass. Beyond the act of throwing the seed capsule into a public lot (we encourage to avoid private green spaces as the seeds may disrupt expensive landscaping/ it is illegal), we ask people to mark on a shared digital map where they placed the pill. With this map, we hope to visualize the citizens of New York collectively greening the city.
Project Continua is a web-based multimedia resource dedicated to the creation and preservation of women's intellectual history. The Persisters booklet is a photo series of 10 historical figures that are represented by the women of today. This project required the skillsets of photography, graphic design and print layout.
In addition, I was apart of the team that flew to a high school in Atlanta, GA to host a wikipedia editing workshop. We taught the class how to create, edit, cite, and publish information on Wikipedia, specifically creating and editing women's biographies. During the workshop Persisters acted as a tool for the students, engaging them with the creative layout while providing educational information.
Background: For three semesters, I was enrolled in a course called Green Roof Ecology and for one those semesters I served as a teaching fellow. The class studied the relationships between the plants, bugs and birds that were present on the roof in order to innovate design interventions that could help promote biodiversity. This ranged from birdhouses to insect hotels to water features that could act as a resource for many living creatures.
This is a 1:100 scale model of the 1 acre green roof, and was used as a tool to show Vice the ecological interventions we were planning to install on their roof.
The model used both hand crafting and fabrication technologies. Laser cutting was used to create the patterns on the decks and patio, as well as cutting out accurate shapes for other various elements. 3D printing was used to create accurate dimensions for the tables, benches, skylights, planter boxes and the structure under the raised meadow. All other components were handcrafted by using a diverse range of creative tools and materials. Some examples include the tall grass which was created by cutting the tips of paint brushes and the solar panel by placing a blue piece of paper under acetate.
NPK is a concept for a foraging restaurant, where guests could venture into a garden and forage for their cocktail drink or meal.
These are pieces used for the scale model that was used to display the design of the service of the restaurant. The foraging restaurant required modular planters in order to easily switch out plants who's fruits/bearings were picked off and replaced with plants that have freshly bloomed forgeable parts. The old plants would be placed in a storage space in the back where they would be allowed to grow new bearings, and then be switched out again.
These pieces are 3 versions of planters that allowed for a modular system of planting as well as offering different high, medium to low points on the z plane for a dynamic foraging experience. These pieces were 3D printed with PLA on a Makerbot Replicator 2 (vertical and low planters) and on an Objet 24 with resin (trellis dome).
In addition, the service blueprint is also provided for a better understanding of the restaurant experience on both the customer's end and the back end. Created in Illustrator.
These data visualizations are showing the arthropod populations collected from Vice Media's green roof. To find more information about the Green Roof Ecology course that hosted this project and to see the model of the roof, click here.
For the three semesters that I was in the class, I was the leader of the insect data collection and analysis. Using Illustrator, I composed these visualizations of data from three collecting dates in the fall of 2016 to present to our clients, Brooklyn Grange and Vice Media.
The data collection is comprised of a single method called pan trapping. It is a common method used to collect insects on roofs and other areas that uses a simple liquid solution and colored bowls. The liquid is one part water: one part antifreeze and one quarter part dish soap. This solution breaks the tension of the surface of the water and allows for the insects to fall into the trap. We used red, yellow and green bowls in our method because they are known for being colors that insects can see and are attracted to.
The data visualizations are important in our research as it acts as a tool for analysis in site specific patterns. The size of the circles represent the number of arthropods found and the color of the circle represent the insect order. The dotted line that leads to the circles are connected to the individual colored pan traps in which that data that the circles are representing originated.
These data visualizations are part of a larger study of insect populations on green roofs and has been shared with Drexel University and NASA for further research.
