July 14: Map the Neighborhood and Design Public Street Furniture - Part 1
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes (mapping session 1, design and sketching session 2, building session 3 + 4)
Age Group: 6-16 years old
Team Work
Introduction (15 minutes)
Objective:
Similar to how we built street furniture for the children’s center, now we are going to take a step forward and design a piece of street furniture for the public on Nagahaswatte road. This activity will be held in 4 sessions, the first two seasons in July, and then to be completed in two more sessions about a month or so later. It is a little more complicated that building for the children’s center because now we have all kinds of neighbors; old and young using the street. So we will spend some time learning about their needs before we
Activity:
Brief discussion about the importance of street furniture in public spaces, ask kids which ones they know in Colombo (especially remnants from the British period).
Show examples of different types of street furniture - historical and new (letterboxes, phone booths, fire hydrants, benches, bike racks, playground equipment, etc.)., see images below
Explain the overall goal of the class and what will be accomplished.
2. Visualization and Observation (20 minutes)- session 1
Objective: Observe and map the neighborhood to identify potential locations suitable for street furniture, start with brainstorming of important/interesting/suitable locations
Activity :
Distribute simple maps of the neighborhood.
Divide the group into Teams of 3 kids (different ages in each group) and let them mark places of interest, based on their knowledge of the neighborhood (in the classroom)
Encourage kids to take notes on why they chose certain spots (e.g., busy intersections, quiet nooks, near schools, special points of interest, etc.).
Regroup and discuss findings and decide to map the top 6 places of interest
3. Making and Problem-Solving (40 minutes)- session 1
Objective: Analyze selected locations and discuss ideas for street furniture.
Activity:
Kids will go out as a whole group and map the 6 identified places together
Encourage kids to take more detailed notes for each location and why they chose those spots, what makes them so special, and what type of street furniture would correspond with the location (older kids can also take pictures to memorize details
Kids are supposed to analyze for each of the 6 locations the following:
Users (e.g., children, adults, elderly)
Aim/Purpose (e.g., rest, play, social interaction)
Conditions of Use (e.g., weather, space constraints)
After completion of the mapping: discuss, vote, and decide on one final location to design the real piece of street furniture.
