aarn: regular pattern stairwell guard turned public art [arch]
In late 2009 I was rooting through some books that a fashion designer at Fringe had checked out from the Somerville Public Library, and stumbled upon Peter S. Stevens’, “Handbook of Regular Patterns: An Introduction to Symmetry in Two Dimensions.” I had been looking to develop some tessellation-like patterns for some clean projects involving 2D manufacturing and this book had a wide range of suitable patterns to use a starting points. Around the same time, the late Open Bicycle was in the process of moving locations to a storefront on Washington Street, from their relatively hidden location around the corner on Hawkins Street. In the process of helping the guy(s) over at Open demolish and conceptualize the new shop, I realized that there was an interesting stair-cut, leading to the basement of the shop, which would be a perfect place for me to put some kind of “installation” to prevent people from falling down the stair-cut, and look super-rad. I talked to Open and they agreed to let me have the spot, and so I started in the process of developing something that I wanted to put there.
I remembered that I had some photocopies that I had made of the Stevens book, and sketched out an adapted version of one of the “regular patterns” in the book. I knew that I wanted the piece to be stainless steel, so I looked into what thickness would be strong enough and also would cost me the least for the most amount of material. Then I designed the actual piece, picked out the proper fasteners and fixtures to do what I wanted to do, and had the 5x5-ft piece cut at my preferred laser shop. The “wall” sat in my office for at least two months, then I brought it over to Open so that we could install it, then they put something else where they said that I could put the wall piece (which I planned to be a nice centerpiece for the shop). So…it sat against the wall and people leaned bikes against it for another two months, and then they came up with some more ideas for it, and eventually I just stuck it on the wall outside of the shop (using some PVC pipe standoffs, so that plants could grow up it and it would sit off of the wall).
Two months later, Open closed. I always thought that it would be cool to grow ivy up this thing, and that was the idea out on the sidewalk at Open, but we never got around to building a planter. So, eventually I will reclaim this thing and give it a proper home, but until then, you can see it hung on the wall outside of where the neighborhood bike shop used to be. Where we used to drink beers, and scheme like children. Long live Open.
