The Beyond Zuccotti Park exhibition at the Center for Architecture marked the one year anniversary of the Occupy movement. Rick Bell, director of the center and curator for the exhibition, discusses the thought process for creating the event and what it means:

We want to convey the idea that freedom of speech and assembly is about people coming together for a democratic and political purpose: not just to play chess…

 

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.

 

To read the full article with color images, click here.