First Sitemap

Bike Path Mural

RESEARCH & INTERVIEWS

Music Builds Community!

"One of the most important benefits of music is its ability to create a sense of belonging between individuals. Music has been linked to forming both social closeness and familial bonds."

Gather Here Students!

We talked with a worker at Gather Here who told us that the outdoor space wasn't used much, except on rare occasions when students work outside.

Lilypad Owner!

We talked with the owner of the Lilypad, one of the businesses by our site and learned that music playing publicly wouldn't work well and the general wishes of the owner.

PRECEDENTS

The Strangers Project

Spaces where people can discover others stories or write their own on a single sheet of paper.

Spotify Train Cars

An April Fools joke, train cars with public speakers in Sydney for Spotify users to connect to and share their music with the whole car.

Chalk Talk

Public Speaker

People write down answers to prompts in chalk, and see other peoples answers

People scan a QR code or write in a book which song they would like to play, and that song will be played for strangers the next day

We talked with the owner of the Lilypad, one of the businesses by our site and learned that music playing publicly wouldn't work well and the general wishes of the owner.

CONCEPT

Voices Unheard focuses on bringing liveliness to Inman Square. The experience does this by sharing stories and using music to bring the community together. The installation is of headphones and chalkboards onto two trees outside Gather Here and The Lilypad on Inman Square. The concept is that when people walk by they will see a temporary plaque explaining the project and scan a QR code. The QR code brings them to a website where they can enter a song into a queue of songs that will play on all the headphones. On the chalkboards, they would put their name and the reason behind their song choice or a little story about themselves.

Original flowchart with all of our ideas

Final Flowchart

Headphones!

Zapier

Final Renders

Storyboard

Main Street + Side Street was a studio that revolved around elevating public spaces. Our team was tasked with improving the public spaces of Inman Square, in tandem with the new public patio.

Studio Framing

Daniel Wolf, Neighborhood Planner

what did you learn HERSTORY / PRECEDENTS

Site Analysis

first prototypes

• bend in an M shape
• doing hinges is possible
• Light diffusion promising

• preferred lower-maintenance Installations
• Keeping in mind who is interacting with this (putting it up/taking it down)
• Keeping acoustics in mind (The Lilypad)
• Shade cover
• Encourage foot traffic

What we learned from prototype

What we learned from client

Sylvan Solar Shade

is a collapsible shade pavilion designed to improve the public patios in Inman Square, Cambridge. The ongoing efforts to create outdoor public spaces within Cambridge have been aiming to foster a comfortable and enjoyable environment. The limited shade cover and declining number of trees in the area has made the seating increasingly hostile to potential users. Using bio-mimicry through foliage shading and modular technology, Sylvan Solar Shade will provide a breathable gathering space for current public patios.

use storyboard

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

Hungry Golf is a modular mini golf course that takes players through some of Inman's most popular restaurants and their dishes, demonstrating Inman's diverse and delicious cuisine.

The holes are specifically designed to get people to appreciate the diversity in their community, and the modular design of the course allows it to be transported with relative ease, ensuring everyone gets a special experience.

Hungry Golf

Inman Square

Inman Square is an ethnically diversified area that is home to professionals, workers, and students and academics from nearby MIT and Harvard. Inman Square is also heavily influenced by Brazilian and Portuguese culture, as shown by the stores bordering Cambridge Street, particularly to the east of Prospect Street.

Inman Square is most likely named after Ralph Inman (1713-1788), a Boston merchant and gentleman of wealth. He had considerable economic interests along the Boston waterfront and, along with Thomas Sodden, possessed 400 acres (which included "what is now the Port." Inman also possessed a "large, three-story rambling mansion" in "Cambridge, a little genteel Town about 4 Miles off (from Boston) where a number of Gentlemen's Families live upon their Estates." This includes the Brattles, who inspired the name Brattle Square.

The Client

• Executive director of East Cambridge Business Association
• Bring a mini golf night to "activate" Inman Square

Jason Alves, Daniel Wolf- on behalf of the City of Cambridge

The Research

• The course folds up like a board game
• Separate pieces are attached via hooks
• Hinges allow for easy flat storage
• Small baseplate holes with removable obstacles

Here's some of the common methods of designing modular mini golf courses:

Constraints:

• Easily stored and set up by 1-2 people in 45 minutes
• Durable and weather resistant
• Easy to store and move to other locations

Site Analysis

• The project didn't really depend on the site. However, the size of the parking lot did determine how big the golf course is.
• Needed to find a way to make the course a decent enough size while also keeping it as compact as possible

Storyboard

First Approach

• Removable obstacles
• Small baseplate

What worked: the whole removable obstacles idea

What didn't: baseplate was still taking up a lot of space

Second Approach

• Connector method
• Pegs in some pieces, holes in others

What worked: small pieces meant easy storage

What didn't: the obstacles still stuck out, meaning the pieces could not be stacked

HOLE 1: 1369

HOLE 2: S&S

HOLE 3: CASA PORTUGAL

HOLE 4: ALL STAR PIZZA

HOLE 5: THE DRUID

HOLE 6: OLÉ

Shape

Storage

Final Product

• Combination of the first two
• Dowels connected the platforms, removable objects
• Added a couple of hinges on some of the bigger holes for even easier storage

Questions?

An Deireadh

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?