European Street Design Challenge
Research, interviews, storyboarding & presentation
Winner of the European Street Design Challenge (first non-European team to win!)
This design competition involved working in close cooperation with local residents and policy makers to create innovative, urban community solutions through the use of collaborative methodologies, together with digital tools and prototyping. My account of the project is published on Medium.
My Role
Interviews
Translator & Presenter
Journey Mapping
Project Management
Who Else Was Involved?
3 x fellow Creative Technologies students
Tools & Methods Used
Design Value Identification
Interviews
Place Analysis
Emotional Mapping
Journey Mapping
Project Overview
We explored how to bring life to Les Ruffins, a place of transition on the outskirts of Paris (Haut Montreuil, next to Parc Montreau). It is used once per week for a market, and occasionally by community groups.
There’s a tramway on the horizon but the project keeps getting pushed back; so in the meantime the space is left empty… waiting. And yet it is right next to one of the most beautiful, historical parks. In the words of the locals, the park is the heart of the community. But it is closed off, blocked by a fence, disconnected from the space right next door. The transition between the two spaces is stark, abrupt. There is just one small entry point in the fence. This leaves the vacant area without a central space for the local people, and without an identity. Removing the fence may help, but what the space needs is a plan for the in-between, the ‘change’ time.
Drawing inspiration from the city of Christchurch, and how locals there responded to losing the heart of the city by building temporary spaces, we developed a plan for an incremental approach to designing the space. It can begin immediately, with local artists and craftspeople constructing temporary objects for the space. These objects would be moveable, allowing the public to explore how they would like to use the space. More importantly, it begins to give the space an identity, and lets the locals know that something is happening and they can be involved.
Extending this concept further, we also designed a more permanent infrastructure to allow the space to be flexible and adaptable in the long term. We proposed a network of mounting points that can be planted in the ground. This provides an exciting infrastructure for artists, markets, and other users of the space. Artists gain access to power, sensor data, and light for use in a variety of ways. Markets can use the points to gain access to power or erect temporary shelters. Visitors to the space can move seating around to sit together. The networked nature of the points also gives the possibility of things like artistic data visualisations, or could be used to inform future developments of the space.
Altogether, this solution creates an adaptable, modular space that is flexible to community needs and breathes life into what will become the heart of Les Ruffins.