Boston City Hall looks like it was designed by the kind of evil dude who twists his handlebar mustache as he awaits some poor soul to experience physical and psychological pain beyond reason. Yeah, it’s that ugly. But rather than just walk by City Hall Plaza’s amorphous, concrete abomination on a daily basis in pure disgust like the rest of Boston, those at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics are soliciting your help in redesigning it.
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Launching a new citywide initiative dubbed the Public Space Invitational, New Urban Mechanics is hoping to completely reimagine public spaces in Boston including – but not limited to – City Hall, public buildings, plazas, streets, sidewalks and street furniture.
The Office’s Streetscape Lab is canvassing The Hub in hopes of zeroing in on “designers, makers, artists, and engineers to improve Boston,” according to its website.
The best part of the program is that submissions are only bound by cost, which New Urban Mechanics asks to be in the “$1000 – $4,500 range for construction and implementation and include a proposed budget.” If you’re able to work within those constraints, the possibilities are limitless. For real. Submissions can be completely brand new creations or an innovative variation on what already exists.
If you think you’ve got what it takes to revamp Boston, you can put forth your application for consideration right here. But if you do, keep in mind the following guildelines:
- Submissions should aim to make civic space, infrastructure, or civic processes more inviting, functional, user friendly, and fun.
- Submissions should be durable, and capable of lasting under normal use and our lovely New England weather conditions.
- Submissions should be implementable within the next 6 months.
- Submissions are encouraged to have a community partner if applicable.
- Submitted ideas should aspire to have an inherent sense of wonderment and discovery built into them.
- Submissions that are not geographically specific should include a preferred list of locations for implementation. To view some potential locations, visit the location tab of the website.
- Ideas that can be replicated or scaled in the future are most compelling.
This is your chance, Bostonians. You can live forever in the hearts of Boston posterity by being the one who took it upon him or herself to overhaul the grotesque monstrosity we know as City Hall.
