Interview.

IHow does your street scape achieve a "sense of place"?
Well, it doesn't look like the rest of New York and is site specific to Washington Place so it has that going for it. It's kind of park-like, with benches and bollards you can sit on, but it is clearly not an extension of Washington Square Park. I hoped that by using street furniture, I could not only identify NYU as a place, but also encourage much lacking street life. I was super into that video on public spaces and how people use them, so I put in a lot of seating and trees (not that Washington Place needs more shade).

What are those lego looking things?
Bollards to keep cars out of the bike lane. Cars in the bike lane are the worst, and I've removed all the curbside parking. I really hate cars, car culture, driving, and street parking makes it more convenient to drive so I have eliminated it. But I don't want drivers double parking in the bike lane either!

What's up with the planter boxes in the street?
The planter boxes are actually "chicanes," which are curb extensions that force cars to drive in a zig zag, slowing them down. It makes the street less attractive to speeding motorists, but still allows necessary traffic to come through.

What's up with the colorful bike lane?
Jan Gehl. Copenhagenize the planet!

Actually, why is there color everywhere?
From an aesthetic standpoint, I think urban designers take themselves too seriously. Modernist metal and sterile white street furniture does not appeal to me. But I'm not into tedious filagrees either, I like clean lines. So I used color to make the landscape more interesting. I'm in love with the street lamps in Flushing Meadows from the 1964 World's Fair, and used them as inspiration for a new streetscape. The bright colored boxes lend something whimsical, playful and postmodern to a block with intimidating buildings. The brutish Meyer Hall building, which certainly doesn't invite foot traffic off of Broadway and onto Washington Place, needs to be quelled with a counterpoint on the street.

For years I wanted to sew for a living, and I think that my obsession with colors and textures is influenced by my love for fabric.

Yeah, but you made the streetscape look like a playground/a salvia trip/Damien Hirst's dot paintings.
Thank you.

Did you really render that mini cooper?
No. I didn't render the mini cooper, the plants, the trash cans, the bicycle, or the people. I borrowed them from the 3D warehouse, which is one of the most awesome parts about sketchup. I wish I could model plants! But I did render the building facades, which I will never do again, along with everything else. I used the project as a learning experience to get better at Sketchup, which I think was successful, and I learned what I do and do not like about the program. It's really intuitive, which is great, but isn't very technical, which makes doing detailed drawings difficult.

What was the most traumatic part of this final?
You can't open newer sketchup files in older versions of the program. NYU computers only have old versions of the program, while my computer has the new one. This was problematic. In order to get the most current version of sketchup downloaded on an NYU computer so I could finish this project on a computer that could render it properly, I had to cry to the computer lab manager because they don't "do" individual updates on computer software.

Moral of the story: crying gets you through bureaucratic red tape? I should try it with the financial aid office.

What was your dream about last night?
I can't quite remember, but I do know that everything in it was Sketchup-able, so I was able to change the scale of objects and move them without effort. Also, everything turned bright blue when you touched it and you could create dotted gridlines to connect objects. It was either really cool or really anxiety inducing.