0.2 Overview
The design of this site anchors radical reclamations of space, time and communal aspirations - offered in the form of various artists', activists', and enthusiasts' reflections of a Third Place.
The term third place, as coined by Ray Oldenburg, refers to a neutral public space for connecting with others in a non-purposeful environment.
Third Place Zine is a bi-annual publication that is an ode to and a departure from Oldenburgs’s ideas, capturing nuanced and changing reflections of gathering in our present world.
Third Place Zine hosts independent reflections on place and community. Their work exists in a space between repos, reflection, and activation, extending out from the physical pages of the zine, into community fundraisers, and events.
It was important that the design of this site captured a sense of the zine's tangable presence. The design takes inspiration from a pamphlet layout, calling to mind the radical communication and dissemination of information used during the civil rights movements, the feminist movement, and the early gay liberation movement. Additionally, the old-web was a source of inspiration for the site's design, encouraging readers to utilize the site as a resource companion.
Oldenburg’s description of middle class American habits in the mid 50’s and 60’s is eerily poignant considering how our modern online habits relate to our sense of individualism today:
“...the pleasures of the city have been largely reduced to consumerism...In the absence of an informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and consumption...Even our efforts at entertaining and being entertained tend toward the competitive and stressful. We come dangerously close to the notion that one “gets sick” in the world beyond one’s domicile and one “gets well” by retreating from it. Thus, while Germans relax amid the rousing company of the bier garten or the French recuperate in their animated little bistros, Americans turn to massaging, meditating, jogging, hot-tubbing, or escape fiction. While others take full advantage of their freedom to associate, we glorify our freedom not to associate.”
- Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place