-Strategic approach to the design of streets
The site is one of typical intersections in a metropolitan area of New York. These have been shaped by transport-driven streets and experienced lack of sustainable characters for neighborhoods. In the site, critical incidents and automobile congestion with high speed have caused difficulty to connect walking and crossing. The site also shows conflicts resulted from the variety of different users and activities.

In New York, the strategy for quality of public life stresses ‘design of streets for people’, which intends to meet the needs of all users with a switched hierarchy of pedestrians, bicyclists and then, motorists. Our design starts from the connection of walking and crossing and offers ‘green bench’ as safe public place so that people can stay and enjoy with an easy access within short distance. The sustainable green environments are plugged for the community of a neighborhood.

As a design element, we use bollards with wide range of uses. On the border between traveling lanes and sidewalks, the conflicts between users, i.e. pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists have destroyed the territories of uses. Here, bollards are an effective tool to strengthen people’s use without level difference on border. With extension of sidewalks, this treatment results in speed-down and reducing the length of crossing for pedestrians, especially people with difficulties in crossing such as the elderly, the young and people carrying pushchairs or trolleys.

This site is an intersection of a travel streets and a living street. Design of street involves various actors such as functional efficiency, aesthetic approach, social and cultural agenda and economic development. The influence of actors differs according to the particular situations of streets and the extent and level of ‘design for people’ needs to be designated considering the situations. In New York, these situations were classified by New York City with three types; travel streets, community streets and living streets.

Bollards are usually designated for safety and transport management by protecting equipment or restricting the access; they are also used diversely for innovative public space as street furniture. These uses of bollards can be implemented with different approaches considering the types of streets. In travel streets, safety, traffic management and traffic-calming are intended; in living streets, as well as uses in travel streets, marks for property area, great public space by organizing various uses. In this site, bollards are placed with functional use for safety along streets. Further, public place is designed on a living street for rearranging activities. Here, the bollards are also used informally as street furniture which people can stay around like benches and leaning walls.

According to the needs, our design of bollards intends flexible use. The bollard we designed is easily plugged with various parts and accommodates diverse functions, i.e. protecting equipment, storing newspapers, information booklets and bicycles. The shape also intends to be suitable for street furniture around which people can enjoy with other people in an amiable mood.