Following the Dog

“When you create a neighbourhood that is friendly to dogs, it is friendly to people, too.” A dog friendly neighbourhood verifies its high spatial quality, including walkability, greenery and accessibility to public facilities. Dogs always motivate its walkers to seek adventures and be caring to its surroundings. Nevertheless dog walking unintentionally generates more accidental encounters between people and nature. Dog walkers, by nature, embody the notion of “eyes on the street”.

We propose three typological interventions as means to nurture the community by comprising a myriad of interactions. The selected sites are representative within the residential area of Rotterdam. Our design is prototypical to re-imagine the dog walking daily scene. We catalyse the dogs and their walkers as social glue that invites for a glance, brings up a smile, and sparks up a verbal conversation with strangers. “Follow the dog” utilizes every stimulated movement of dogs, including running uphill, splashing water, and catching hanging toys. And each move of the dog will trigger to different use of the space and interactions. For instance, the yellow seesaw will be flip-flopped to form an eye contact with apartment owner. The blue net is elevated for swing while dog catches the toys hanging on there. The lotus leafs are gently immersed for feeding the ducks. We picture the dog walking in diverse ways every day, while it also unconsciously knits a social fabric, bridge the private and public lives within the proximity.

I’m Boris, the most adventurous dog in Rotterdam.  Here is Marjolein, my best roommate, calling me for joining her walk.

Without doubt, I always find something exciting on the peak of yellow seesaw. She seems nice and curious.

Ahhh… this is my favorite plaza. This really makes my day! Don’t worry about me, Marjolein. I’ll make new friends. Just go and get your groceries.

Phew… what a hot day… then I see water pond and dune!

Like all the other cats, Luna always makes excuse to be lazy.  For the sake of her health, I need to help her to do some exercise. How about running on the yellow seesaw!

How about jumping to another one? This leaf also sank a bit and more water for me to drink and spin.
The other dog also hangs out his tongue and ready to dive into the water.

Marjolein must like her too. Or is she just taking a breather? Are they talking about me now? Hmm… Here she comes!  

I know she loves me to burn out the energy to catch the hanging balls. Then she could get a random but fun swing, or an unbalanced hammock. Look, I could make a beautiful spin and laid down.

So breezy.. and I see that ducks love here too. Wait… the ducks are enjoying their meal around the leaf since I stand here and make the leaf immersed a bit. Wow that’s cool!

Facts & Credits

Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Program & Size: Tactical urbanism

Time: March 2022

Client: spring onion atelier initiative

Lead by: Jammy Zhu, Chun Hoi Hui, Yang Zhang

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