At Re:form, Makalé Cullen reveals the design history of the drinking fountain in New York City.
In the early 1990s, during the salad days of his civic career, Emmanuel (Thingue, Senior Landscape Architect with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation) unwittingly became the designer of what is now the most ubiquitous style of drinking fountain in New York City’s parks — an uninterrupted cast iron number that he originally designed for an upgrade of Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza….
“During our design research,” Emmanuel says, “we found that most city park drinking fountains were vandalized in one specific way — by knocking out the bubbler. That was the single, chronic, most destructive form of vandalism because once the bubbler is gone the entire piece of furniture housing the waterworks is completely useless.” And so out of the gate, New York City Parks was charged with creating a drinking fountain design that was indestructible, functional and elegant.
“Shaping Water” (re:form)