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

CRYING HEADS

SITTING TOWER

CAMBRIDGE VAMPIRE PATIO

• Large pyramid-shaped seating area
• Shaded

• Climbable "heads" that can be used as seating
• Whiteboard coating and markers
• The heads' underside is shaded
• Represents the struggles that teenagers face in Cambridge

• Shaded gothic-style patio
• Could potentially organize and host activities and art

PROTOTYPE PICTURES

A pyramid-like structure that gives multiple levels of seating.

Heads that represent the struggles of Cambridge teens.

Sitting Tower

Crying Heads

• Everyone we spoke to agreed that there aren't enough third spaces in Cambridge
• Teens are particularly affected by a lack of third spaces as they usually don't have a consistent source of income
• None of Central's public seating is properly shaded. In our changing climate, this is an immediately relevant issue.

• Studies have shown that the importance of play never diminishes as you grow older
• A vertical design allows people to sit closer without encroaching on personal space

RESEARCH

SITTING TOWER





How are you connecting this precedent to your design intervention

Precedent 2

Parachute



 Mountain Top

By Rosan Bosch

Parachutes provide a colorful, shaded canopy. Light shining through the parachute projects colors onto the object below it.

Mountain top is a structure with different layers of seating that create a sense of community.

Playground

Verticality and a "playful", compact design are incorporated in all of our prototypes.

Questions to explore...

Next Steps!

How would you build this?

Higher fidelity models + models of our later designs

What stands out to you most?

Incorporate multiple ideas into one

3d renders of our potential designs

How would you imagine this in Lafayette?