Hear-Here
Project Site:
Van Aken RTA Plaza/ Shaker Heights, OH
Funded By:
City of Shaker Heights
Dimensions:
21'W x 15'H x 8'-6"D
Description:
These symbolic roofed structures overhead signal individual’s societal roles. The peaked forms suggest an associative range from personal/ residential to civic/ institutional. The communal spaces within facilitate engagement, interaction, or dialogue. The sitework provides a metaphoric armature for the community’s content – diverse identities, histories, and dynamics. At this crossroads of societal transience via bicycle, bus, train, or automobile, this structure evokes a symbolic village, invites inhabitation, and sparks face-to-face conversations and interactions via prompts that are inscribed on the vertical and overhead surfaces – Express, Joke, Disagree, Flirt, Laugh, Confide, etc. Inscribed granite stones inset into the plaza suggest the final resting place of indirect communication technologies– Telegram, Postcard, Tweet, Smoke Signal, Letter, etc. – that have supplanted direct human interactions over decades and centuries, eventually becoming obsolete.
Constructed of concrete, structural steel, aluminum, polycarbonate with die-cut inscriptions, external illumination.
