Creating Moments of Kinetic Play along the Lungatevre
Team
Name: Radhya Kareem
Nationality: Pakistani
Institution: Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture
Name: Sana Naeem
Nationality: Pakistani
Institution: Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture
-FINALIST of Street of Tomorrow Competition
“Oh boat of paper, oh water of the rains”
These were the words to an old Bollywood song and also the simple elements that made up the childhood experiences of our parents when neighbourhoods were tight knit communities, streets were almost a communal lounge and a cherished past time was setting off paper boats down streaming rainwater. To design a street for play, we began with a conceptual maquette, a bottle filled with memories of paper-boats, playing marbles, twinkling lights put up during festivities. Overtime, pristine roads and homogenous cookie cutter neighbourhoods have stolen important experiences of play and everyday life from the children of today.
Experiences that tie the south-asian city of Karachi to Rome is how water or a river played an important role in the existence of both cities. We have situated our street interventions near Tiber Island’s connecting bridges Ponte Fabricio and Ponte Cestio to symbolise the connections we are making with both contexts.
Our section is a stitch of different street apertures that attempt to activate the street as a place for kinetic activity for pedestrians rather than vehicles. Channelling water from the rivers beyond, these Lungateveres or boulevards include hyper-real manifestations: water-slides carrying paperboats, hydro-powered rickshaws, air filter towers made of recycled mushroom and scaffolding structures that become hanging gardens to grow food, mazes for play and multilevel garden stairs. Slow-mobility is prioritised, street hawkers and octogenarians alike float on hover-boards.
The street then becomes the bazaar and the carnival, an agora that facilitates pluralism and an arboretum for chance encounters, a place for play.
#green-bluestreets #historicalvehiclesmusealisation #slowmobility #publicspace #pedestrianisationstreetfronts #mobilitynodes
