Assignment: Thoughtless Acts

Collaborators:

Assignment: Thoughtless Acts
Collaborators:

Assignment: Thoughtless Acts
Collaborators: Michael Manoochehri

Obligatory Bicycle Thoughtless Acts:

These first two photos illustrate a common problem that Americans face: lack of bike parking. Even in a progressive city like Berkeley California, it can often be hard to find a place to park a bike. In these two photos, people have locked bikes to railings, and someone has locked a bike to a tree.

The obvious solution is to come up with clever ways to install bike parking structures. I can imagine that creating bike parking is easier said than done, as the parking structures, for example, might be fairly expensive to install, or might ruin the landscape. I have always thought that the rails on outdoor paths and stairways could be better designed: they must be kept clear for access, but maybe they can have an extra rail on the outside (away from the handrail) that people could lock their bikes up to?

The work truck with no place for tools:

Many people who have utility trucks often carry around tools. In this case, someone has used one of the holes in the truck bed to store an old shovel. The shovel looks like it is not going anywhere, and it is probably very easy to store in this position!

There are lots of ways this thoughtless act can be implemented as a design improvement. For example, a gardener probably has lots of tools with long handles - why not design the truck bed with many metal "holsters" for garden equipment? It would be convenient to store the tools, and would improve the organization of them during work projects.

Signs: Where do I post this so someone can see it?

These next two posts are not necessarily "thoughtless acts," but they do illustrate a point of a lack of obvious places to post material. The first sign is a paper notice attached to a more permanent sign, in the hope that someone would see it. The second sign uses the fairly clever, and common, technique of creating a very "hard to move" sign by anchoring a wooden post in concrete.