Fire Hydrants

Recently my class received an assignment to redesign a neighborhood.
I decided to focus on an area of Berkeley, Downtown Bart Plaza.
It's literally only a corner of an intersection, but the BART entrance is fairly impressive.

One of the my main focuses were the fire hydrants in this area

 

Originally, the idea of designing a fire hydrant seemed kind of pointless. Firefighters seem to be fine with the objects and they do their job.

But when you really start focusing on any object, you can see it's faults.

For example, this particular hydrant lacks a chain of any sort, which means the cap can easily get lost after a hectic fire.

Lots of hydrants deal with loose bolt issues, shaky foundations, and environments which either cover of camouflauge them.

These are all the most common technical areas...the only other problem would be a lack of musical entertainment for firemen when they're doing their duty...but a music player might be a disrepectful addition....

Back on topic, this particular area of Berkeley happens to scream "ECOFRIENDLY" to my face.

The area itself is covered in bike racks

Compost bins and recycle signs are also prominent in the large area. 

The area is generally floral, so I decided to add that feature to redesigning the fire alarms in the area.

First I looked at specific sizes for a normal hydrant, and then I decided to create my own "environmental" version. The main contrast is between the copper tone and the obnoxious green bolts, which actually help a fireman with easily spotting the hydrant.

If Shrek's world had fire hydrants, it would be this baby.