Geunhee Lee

Leisure, Pleasure and Social Interaction

Our Garden is a platform for social interaction, leisure, and pleasure for people of all ages, abilities and nationalities. It consists of a series of gardens planted all over the city that belong to and are looked after by the public.

The idea is simple: people are given an invitation and a seed as a gift and are asked to contribute to a garden in their neighborhood. The invitation is dual in purpose; aside from informing a person, it can then pop-up into a biodegradable flowerpot, with the opportunity to grow a plant at home and to bring the grown plant to their neighborhood Our Garden.

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The hope is that some people will continue caring for the plants and enjoy them, perhaps even harvesting them, picking fruits, or comparing their plants and chatting with others. People can contribute as much or as little as they like to the garden.

Our Garden amalgamates vertical gardens, allotments and guerilla gardening. The team chose a vertical garden because it is more accessible to people of different abilities than a conventional one; a wheelchair user or a child would find it easy to plant a flower or pick a fruit. The gardens use minimal space and bring life and vibrancy to the city and give people the opportunity to touch, feel, smell, see and taste nature at their doorstep.

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The modular plant holders can be multiplied to create gardens of various sizes and can be adapted to different situations. An irrigation system drip-feeds into the plants.To launch and promote Our Garden, a variety of media would be used, from personally delivered invitations to posters encouraging the public to vote for the next garden site in their neighborhood.

Once established, the garden would publicize itself through harvesting and planting festivals and other related events. Our Garden website could connect Our Gardeners using the Internet and Our Garden wear would encourage inclusion beyond the gardens themselves.

Process

Brainstorming

on; Product, Service, Apps, Graphic, Environment ...

The team's main challenge was to understand how to motivate people to do something that makes leisure, pleasure, and social interaction. We considered the fact that owning a dog encourages owners to be more active and social. With this in mind, the team aimed to create a product that incorporated these characteristics, but with the caveat that it not be demanding or time-consuming for the user.

Categorization

Since there were no limitations on the design (if it's a design for all!), we had a hard time figuring out which factors would be suitable for our concept. Every designer on our team came from a different cultural background and profession, which created a unique synergy that made the idea thrive. Jim Dawton, the team leader, suggested that we rattle off ideas without thinking about specific uses or goals, and then after, group all the ideas into 7 categories; Product, Website, Service, Application, Graphic, Environment and Campaign.

Interview

Our design partner, Jeong Soon Hwang(황정순 할머님), was 82 years old woman who ran an orchard in North Korea before moving to South Korea because of the war. She likes walking in the surrounding mountains but is not interested in taking up new activities or relationships at this stage in her life. We took the time to walk and talk together and received feedback and inspiration by observing her daily life.

Protytyping

Based on radically open discussions that involved sharing crazy ideas, we picked several ideas on how to progress and mine was the following:

1, Festival

2. Kitchen

3. Listening wall

Finally, we converged all our ideas into a design concept 'Our Garden: 우리뜰': a vertical garden run by the public.