Susan Chin, Executive Director of the Design Trust for Public Space
Following on to my post yesterday about the a project called Under the Elevated that is looking at the in New York City that exist under the elevated transportation infrastructure of the city, I also was able to sit down with Susan Chin of the Design Trust for Public Space and talk for around ten minutes about the project.
I would describe the Design Trust as a sort of R&D lab for public space improvements in New York. They do very early stage conceptual studies of things like spaces under elevated trains, and develop ideas that can then be taken forward and developed by other people. In this case, they collected a bunch of data and such about the city’s inventory and such, but also created two “pop-up” installations, one in the Bronx and one in Chinatown, to start experimenting with ideas. They don’t even consider these pop-ups as actual pilots, which is what you’d do in the next phase of work, should anyone choose to advance the agenda (which in this case it looks like the DOT will).
I hope you enjoy the conversation. If the audio player doesn’t display for you, click over to listen on SoundCloud.