UB professor Brad Wales, AIA, and his students are nearing the final completion phase of the 18th Street Community Park. Since last reporting on the project, two additional industrial benches have been installed, along with the rest of concrete fingers that stretch out from the totem fence into the park.
Now that most of the heavy lifts are complete, the smaller details are being finalized, including installing a brilliant Rigidized Metals chess set and the maintained meadow area (MMA). The low maintenance park is designed so that the greenery will grow through the concrete fingers. The benches are designed for short term seating, not long term sleeping – a solution that many neighborhoods should mimic… especially the ones that are wary of installing benches that can turn into loitering stations.
The 18th Street Park is just one of Brad Wales’ Small Built Works projects. Others can be seen in the form of bus shelters and kiosks in Allentown (see additional projects).