Being a teen in America

-Cars

-Hostility

-Lack of voice (treated as ephemeral)

What about in Cambridge?

-Public spaces are endangered

-People are forced to make their own spaces

-Avenues for self-expression are more or less restricted to the internet (for most teens)

Lafayette Square is ripe for potential hangout space. Unfortunately, all free and public activity is stifled by the necessity of bringing your own items (chessboards with no chess sets?) or of buying things sur place. Every single person we asked in our interviews explicitly agreed that the need for public third spaces is unmet- and that public spaces are necessary for a healthy city.

Centraphone was designed based on feedback by Daniel Wolf, our client.

Crying Heads:

What did we learn?

More similar to our current iteration, the Crying Heads are a hangout spot that represent the sadness of Cambridge teens.

The shadows, and other dark area's could potentially make people uncomfortable and uneasy.

Sitting Tower:

What did we learn?

One of our early prototypes, featuring layers of seating designed to engage conversation.

The pyramid like shape is hierarchical and gives a solid, strong energy.

Design Process

Mid-Review

More Sketches

Centraphone

First Sketches

Crying Heads

Sitting Tower

As children grow into adults, the need for play never diminishes, and the awkward transitional state between the two, teenagers, have their struggles treated as "ephemeral" and ignored as a matter of course. As public spaces are slowly erased in favor of money-making organizations, the need for a voice increases in inverse proportion. Centraphone is a public structure designed from the ground up to represent, and assist in solving, the struggles of the teens of Cambridge; Centraphone gives them a place to be and a way to speak to the world.

Thesis

Centraphone

Use Model

Examples of interactions