Role: Project Manager, Lead Designer

Client: Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)

Year: 2018

Interactive design, fabrication, and management for an exhibit inside a shipping container

 PROBLEM

In 2018, the HUBWeek Festival invited the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) to create an installation in a shipping container for their upcoming festival themed "We the Future." MAPC was preparing to launch an update to Greater Boston's regional plan, so the agency sought to more actively engage the public about planning issues, specifically housing. As a planning agency however, MAPC had never created large-scale public engagements in-house. When I was hired a year after the Arts & Culture Department was established, I was assigned this project to design and build the installation as a soft launch to the regional plan update.

SOLUTION

I built a team of in-house designers, the agency's Artist-in-Residence (Carolyn Lewenberg), and external fabricators to construct the installation. The design began with a provocation, 'what if we could transport people to any of the 101 cities and towns in the region, and show how different policies impact the creation of vibrant, walkable neighborhoods where people want to – and can afford to – live and work?' By creating a tactile and immersive experience, Housing > (Housing Forward) sought to engage people in conversations about the root causes of the housing shortage that threatens our families and communities, economic prospects, and quality of life.

OUTCOME

The installation featured multiple custom interactive stations including: a Data Table (a light cabinet with map overlays showing the intersections of issues such as race, property values, school assessment, and more), a transparent shattered glass map for visitors to mark where they were from, a timeline of housing policies mounted on a display with flip-cards showing descriptions for each policy's intended effects and unintended consequences, kiosks with podcasts of housing stories, fill-in-the-blank posters, and custom-designed modular stands that supported each of the displays.

Following the completion of the event, MAPC continued to use the stands, kiosk, and Data Table at engagements for their regional plan update, MetroCommon.