Making an environment more inviting and engaging to facilitate the growth of culture.
On a study abroad trip to Copenhagen our small class was assigned a challenge to investigate how we could "disrupt space" by means of location research and intervention. The problem was that in a city full of culture and social areas, this specific location was lacking both, despite it's heavy foot traffic between the light rail stop and a giant mall. We were broken up into teams to investigate ways we could stimulate culture and socialization in this location.
Our first step was to see for ourselves the daily use of this area, what kinds of people come here? How do people get here? Is there anything this area is missing? Take a look at the photos and see if you can start to get some ideas on how this space could be improved.
We can see that this space gets a good amount of foot traffic due to it being a stop for the metro, busses, and appears to be accessible for bicyclists. People of all age groups appear to be coming and going. Lastly we can start to see that there are not many places to sit. We observed people sitting on bike racks waiting for the bus, sitting on stairs, on the ground or near a water feature. We also noticed a food cart setup conveniently across from the mall next to the bus stop. In the bottom picture, you can see the edge of the food cart on the left of the photo.
The answer seemed so obvious, create a space for people to comfortably sit and naturally they will congregate. Sort of like Field of Dreams, but with pallet benches. We were given an empty space within the mall to use as our studio, and we found some pallets we could use in the loading dock. Then we all started to paint the pallets so that they appeared intentional and purposeful when placed in Kay Fiskers Plads.
We painted the pallets bright yellow to draw attention to them in an otherwise gray landscape, and also attached pens and surveys to some of the benches so people could tell us what they thought about the idea. People immediately congregated to the benches and used them for sitting.
The people who pass through this area most likely visited this area on a daily or weekly basis. We were only there for about 2 weeks, so it was important for us to obtain peoples opinions about the new installations.
It ended up working so well, that the man from the food cart thanked us for the idea and asked if they could be permanent installations as it was directly affecting his sales in a positive way.
Though this project was not at all digital, the amount of observation, discussion, collaboration, ideating, and problem solving was something that has stuck with me, and has helped guide my process when attempting to solve other problems. Copenhagen is a wonderful city, and I fell in love with the amount of design studios out there that are creating new and engaging ways to create positive social change by using design.