As life during the pandemic in New York City is moving out of homes and onto the streets, modular design can help ensure safe public spaces.
“We really feel like this is a time when the city has been playing catch up and being reactive. Now we have an opportunity to really get out ahead of it,” explains principal Vivian Liao Korich. “We have an opportunity to rethink public space and how it can be made better. That’s the design challenge.” Totem’s practice is dedicated to improving public space.
For restaurants who are participating in outdoor dining, two standards should be set, the firm argues: visual cues for social distancing and modular installations for equitable pedestrian safety. The former can be achieved via handrails, 6 feet in length; the latter, via a toolkit of standardized parts that includes water-filled barriers lit from the inside, creating glowing markers for moving vehicles.
Considering the number of temporary installations that were often hastily-built, “as I walk around New York today, it kind of feels like a movie set,” continues the urban planner. “Placemaking and temporary activation have become really important and help define what the new normal should be.” He laments that the city has not made more of an effort to consider a future where these disposable installations might be made permanent.
Modular outdoor furniture and design helps to address the throwaway nature of these installations, which come winter have a certainly undetermined fate. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced that indoor dining will resume in New York City beginning on September 30, at 25% capacity. If all goes well and infection rates stay low, that allowance may go up to 50% on November 1.
Whether New Yorkers will opt to dine in the cold or take their chances on new indoor protocols is yet to be seen. Changes to both lifestyle and the streetscape have certainly had to be made to ensure safety during the coronavirus pandemic, but “the resilient nature of New Yorkers and times like these really breed innovation,” says Korich who notes that she does not underestimate the ability of people to adapt.
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