The Center for Architecture reflects on the Occupy anniversary and the Beyond Zuccotti Park exhibition in “Occupy Anniversary: Looking Back at the Intersection of Protest and Public Space”:

The exhibition coincides with the book of the same name published by New Village Press in Oakland. In it are essays by 42 writers, as well as an introduction by Michael Kimmelman. The content of the show are quotes from the book and photos of where people were in those months last year. It’s not an archive or a history of what happened and it’s not looking backward trying to catalogue what the design features were of the places of assembly, but it’s really talking about the future. How does this continue and in what form?

 

We also explore how architecture relates to the Occupy movement by looking at the use of public space. It’s not just as important as drinking a cup of coffee or getting away from the office, but the parks and plazas and places that people can assemble in New York and other cities contribute to a society that’s open and allows for an exchange of ideas and discord.

 

By creating public places in cities, you can create the same type of space that has that openness of communication like a college student union or a dining hall. That’s how you keep that “continuing education” mentality alive. For people like architects—who think about the physical environment first—to not be involved would be crazy. These are the people who care how space augments the ability to communicate beyond the Internet, email, and twitter.

 

What Occupy meant to a lot of people was a different way of communicating and transparently and democratically interacting.

Read the full entry with visuals on Good.