Community-based design + Social Innovation + Design for Protest

As global populations increase, it is inevitable that the growth of cities will follow suit. Urban environments change at such a rapid pace that many areas that used to be public spaces have now become privatized by land developers or are heavily regulated through strict legislation.

David Harvey, a geographer, wrote a paper titled The Right To The City (2008), where he proclaimed: “[that] the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is… one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights”. Here, I resolved to question: “If design strategies could be used as a way to counteract social imbalances, how could I address the loss of accessible public places through the application of design?”

Working In Public

It has been found that the health and safety of the street correlate with the number and variety of users across different times of the day. Within this context, how may we reclaim urban infrastructures so that we may once again congregate, work, play, and relax in public spaces?

This assemblage of parasitic furniture is positioned as an activist project that hopes to empower individuals by activating "publicly owned private spaces" (POPS). Through providing comfort in activities such as commensality (the act of eating together), play and self-expression, users are afforded more personal experiences that invites them to inhabit public spaces more comfortably across London.

By interviewing people, I was able to gauge interest and the need for active public spaces. After mapping the flow of conversations from the interviews, I summarized my findings.