The Burning Man Project is proud to support Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) in their collaboration with Intersection for the Arts (IFTA), IDEO and Rebar, as they produce the Urban Prototyping (UP) Festival. The festival takes place on October 20th on the blocks around 5th and Mission Streets in San Francisco.
Here’s an excerpt from their press release, describing the purpose for the festival:
The past several years have seen a surge in new forms of civic engagement, with teams of citizens joining together to build apps and projects that use technology to address contemporary urban issues. Now, a new initiative is bringing this same open-source “hacking” mentality to the physical realm. Building on the parallel rise of “tactical urbanism”–the use of small-scale, informal designs to seed long-term changes to the city landscape– the Urban Prototyping (UP) Festival aims to support new design and technology projects that improve the urban environment by creating more inspiring, livable and engaging public spaces.
The San Francisco UP Festival will take place on October 20, 2012, and will feature over 20 model projects set up in streets and parking lots in a 3-block area around the 5M Project at 5th and Mission. Each project embodies the concept of open source and will be documented so that they can be replicated in any city worldwide. Model projects range from the whimsical to practical and include outdoor gardens, urban playscapes, glowing crosswalks, public urinals, urban parasol structures, and much more. The projects will give everyone the chance to see firsthand how these rapidly prototyped urban interventions can change and challenge the way we use, share, and contribute to our public spaces.
Urbanist-minded Burners are encouraged to go and participate in this innovative festival about creative use of public spaces — your experience with Black Rock City surely has given you an idea or two to offer in that regard!
