Hansy Better builds a better and bigger hammock for all

Update 08/17/10: Article about the hammock in Boston.com

Hansy Better (Associate Professor, Architecture) has received grants from the Boston Society of Architects, the Boston Greenway, and private support for her “Big Hammock Project”.  The project received the inaugural award of the Awesome Foundation.  Better and her crew of volunteers are building and installing an 8’ x 38’ wide hammock (deemed the world’s biggest portable hammock by the Guinness Book of World Records) at the intersection of Oliver Street and Atlantic Avenue on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The Greenway, a new 15 acre public parkland, is one of the happy civic bonuses which emerged from the Big Dig.

WBUR’s Radio Boston Show interviewed Better about the project on Thursday, August 12. Click here to hear the interview.

The crew includes Erik Nelson and Anthony Piermarini (both Critics in the Dept of Architecture) and RISD students Ruth Bohn, Michelle Mizioch, Chelsea Plumb, Andrew Wise, Jesen Tanadi, and Allie Surdovel. Students Taijasa Jordan, Kate Cho, Liang Dong, Stefan DiLeo, and Myla Tak have also pitched in. The Division of Architecture + Design provided seed money for the project.

The hammock is made of locally sourced and recycled materials much of which has been donated. R&W Rope, and Arteplas are donating recycled polypropylene rope. V&G Ironworks is donating the labor associated with the fabrication of the hammock’s structural frame, and Duncan Galvanizing is donating the galvanization of the frame.

Better says that “One may think of the hammock as a new suspended common ground where the individual’s weight, size and position are in concert with other bodies on the hammock. It is social ground.”

Update 08/17/10: Article about the hammock in Boston.com

Click here to visit the project website