GlowSticks Influenced by closures and surface scraping in this downtown block, this proposal promotes a different kind of urban relationship. A field of GlowSticks, an overblown version of the handheld kind, intervenes in the construction project to add a new layer of difference, spectacle and event, promoting a sensorial experience unlike any other space in the city. The GlowSticks not only soften the disruptive effects of the building of the station but provide new unexpected moments of social and cultural construction. The enclosed block presents an opportunity to test a different attitude in the public realm. The flat asphalt surface acts as its testing ground and allows a simple and peculiar object the opportunity to appropriate a substantial and prominent space through its multiplication. GlowSticks’ programmatic opportunities By moving the sticks, pedestrians can make private spaces of reprieve from the city, or they can weave through and around them in their own patterns. Retailers can use them as a buffer from the construction, and to mark their coffee shop patios and sidewalk vend- ing. Like orange construction barrels and cones, construction workers would use the GlowSticks as safety and hazard markers and to en- close the construction area. Arrangements could be continually reworked to accommodate construction, creating denser, purposeful arrangements, and new interpretive opportunities. The sticks’ lack of fixity promotes limitless opportunities for engagement. They can be dragged, picked up, knocked over, moved around and carried away. They are urban fixtures which refuse to be static. The Glow - Stick is an element with no singular purpose or program. Its lack of reasoning is precisely its point. It relies on the urban participant to give it its purpose. These gestures are engagements within the public realm that are largely nonexistent.
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