LUNCH BREAK

Heading off to Cali tomorrow for the holidays. Back in 2010. Until then, I leave you with this neat little rendering my husband did of a NYC bus stop turned "lunch stop".

Here's to happy lunching in 2010.

Hey, Everybody

Check out all the great photos to your right!

Have a great weekend.

Best, AP

photographer: Steph Mantis (stephmantis.com)

A Big Shout Out

To the Design Trust For Public Space, for blogging about Pop Up Lunch. I look forward to partnering with you in a future Public Space Potluck!

PS: Be sure to check out "A Place is Better than a Plan," by Andrew M. Manshel, which was featured on the Design Trust blog on Tuesday. This article is Pop Up Lunch approved.

Pop Up Lunch Box

Pop Up Lunch just doesn't stop and today I have a new prototype to introduce to the site. I developed it after watching all these New Yorkers hunched over on public benches with no flat surface on which to comfortably spread their food.

To make lunching a little bit easier, a little bit more beautiful, I created this lunch box, which transforms into a lovely plate when opened.

In Follow Up

After my F+ on national TV, I was thinking about other forms that could serve as "3rd hands" while also being light and compact enough for people to carry around with them. I came up with this magnetic cup-holder. It is made out of polypropylene and folds flat for easy portability. After I made this I realized that it made a lot of sense to just work with a form that we are already really comfortable with: the Coffee Cozy. Why not just embed magnets into one of those?

Love this Pic

Thank you to Steph Mantis (www.stephmantis.com) for doing an amazing job with photographing my prototypes. I particularly love this image. More to come when I get my life back in order after the (organized) chaos of finishing up my last semester at Pratt. Night.

A Little Explanation

Here's to an F+!

At this rate, I am averaging about 1 blog posting a week. Snail's pace news cycle over here, but hopefully this post will make up for it.

So a producer from Fox Business News saw my work on the Midtownlunch.com; he contacted me and asked if I wanted to appear on this segment they do called, "So You Think You Are An Entrepreneur". Contestants come on the show, present their ideas, and the three judges give them a Pass/Fail rating.

I went on the show last night. I got an F+. That's right, an F+! (The "WOW Toilet" passed with flying colors but no, not the Lunch Ledge).

It is totally fine. The judges raised very valid points: a) people don't want to carry more stuff around with them and b) the products were too specific to NYC to be profitable.

But, specific to NYC was exactly my intent. Most of all, with my thesis, I am hoping to present new possibilities for the streets and public spaces of NYC. Instead of marketing these products nationally, I'd love it if some of the ideas I developed, in some form, could became part of the street "furniture" system that the city itself provided for us.

Right now there is no functional or visual cohesiveness between the structures on the street. Trash cans are dirty and ugly, fire hydrants are there to get peed on, and there are too many signs telling us what to do but not helping us at all.

But what if there was a way to wrap up the structures into a cohesive system that worked better for everyone involved. There might be pedestrian stations at various street corners or integrated into existing structures, such as bus stops. These stations could provide street eating and seating rentals (e.g. lunch ledge, cup hook, chair) as well as newspaper stands, trash and recycling bins, and even a book sharing program sponsored by the Public Library. It could be profitable for the city, fabulous for us, and it could all look beautiful! That's an A+ idea to me.

Here is the actual link to my segment (sorry about the fake-out video image above):

http://www.foxbusiness.com/happyhour/index.html

Enjoy!