The following is a selection of projects in the spirit of Urban Prototyping which use new methods to reimagine the use of public space. Some of them are mainly physical, others are mainly digital – but they share in common a blending of these worlds, and a vision for changing the way we use, measure, participate in, or interact with a city.
Park(ing) Day |
Rebar |
spreading a replicable model for transforming public space
Park(ing) Day began as a temporary day of action, transforming a single parking space into a public green space for one day. The project sparked an enduring dialog about the use of public space, and used the power of social media and digital documentation to rapidly spawn a global movement. Park(ing) Day has since been celebrated in over 30 countries, and later led to the creation of a formal city permit for parklets in San Francisco.
Walk Raleigh |
Matt Tomasulo |
using guerrilla urbanism to foster pilot projects and civic dialog
Walk Raleigh is a public messaging campaign to raise awareness around alternatives to automobile transportation in Raleigh, North Carolina. The project team’s first installations were completed by zip-tying signage to city infrastructure in the middle of the night. After being removed by municipal officials shortly thereafter, the signs were unanimously adopted into a formal pilot program by the city council after receiving widespread public support. The design’s QR code allows pedestrians to navigate pre-curated routes through their city using their mobile phones.
Faces |
Theo Watson |
using interactive media to facilitate public engagement
Faces is an interactive installation that captures portraits of pedestrians and displays them at large scale using facial recognition and outdoor projection. The project was installed on Market Street in San Francisco for six months in 2011, during which it captured over 30,000 portraits. Reclaiming an abandoned storefront in one of the city’s most troubled locations, the piece demonstrated how interactivity and media can transform public space.
TenderVoice/TenderNoise |
Arup, Stamen, Movity, GAFFTA |
hitting the streets to collect and visualize local data
TenderVoice/TenderNoise is an acoustic ecology project capturing the positive and negative impacts of noise and sound in San Francisco’s Tenderoin district. Team members took decibel monitors and field recorders into the city streets to build the first local collections of real-time noise data and archival stories from service organizations. This data was expressed in a series of interactive maps, providing a completely new perspective on the neighborhood’s issues.
