- pursuing a design against street crime agenda
I found this little delight whilst walking past the Design Centre in Chelsea Harbour, London. It’s a gorgeous street light in the shape of a table lamp, and I was wowed by such a brilliant example of function and form working perfectly together, without either having to compromise. Just lovely.
In a spare few minutes this evening when browsing the web, I came across this fascinating – and shocking – news story about “slash-proof” school blazers, spawned from an intense fear of street crime that some parents face.
Whilst my initial reaction was one of horror about how vulnerability-led this concept was (Kevlar?? In school blazers??), what really stung was that Romford happens to be only 15 minutes from my hometown of Brentwood – a relatively quiet and affluent part of Essex.
So if we’re not talking about the ghettos of LA here, what does this example serve to illustrate? To me, it reminds me just how potent fear of crime can be – as well as how best to go about promoting, rather than minimising, it.
