Drop In by matthew mazzotta

Ankeny Welcomes Trail Users to the Hometown Front Porch — and Bathroom

Matthew Mazzotta’s Drop In sculpture integrates seamlessly with a single-stall unisex ADA bathroom trail amenity. Whether trail users are entering Ankeny or leaving on a High Trestle Trail adventure, this project may be the first ever public art installation to house a public bathroom. The front porch with swings and user-dockable music offers an easy place to rest and enjoy shade, reflecting on Ankeny’s friendly hometown feel and hospitality.

Drop In finds excellent cost efficiencies by integrating existing plans to add a trail amenity with the public art project, providing a unique feature that Ankeny will value not only for its artfulness, but for its usefulness. This project was enthusiastically supported by citizens and developed as part of Group Creatives’ public art master plan, the High Trestle Trail Experience. It is supported in part through the Public Art in Infrastructure grant from Bravo Greater Des Moines and is scheduled to complete in 2021.

Matthew’s projects have been named “Architecture Project of the Year” from the Dezeen Awards at the Tate Modern to Huffington Post’s “9 Design Projects Tackling America's Poverty Crisis, One Community At A Time” and have received dozens of international art and architecture awards. Six of his projects have been recognized by the Americans For the Arts. His work has been featured on CNN, BBC, NPR, The Huffington Post, Discovery Channel, and Science Magazine to name a few, and presented at the Cooper Hewitt – Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC.

Mazzotta received his BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Masters of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology. He is TED Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.