In the restless choreography of New York City, where architecture and action constantly collide, this project imagines protest not as rupture but as rhythm; a right inscribed into the body of the city itself. Our proposal constructs a network of modular interventions through objects of protest that live dual lives. They inhabit everyday urban spaces as benign structures of gathering, exchange, or rest, but in moments of collective urgency, they transform into instruments of resistance.

Each module is conceived as a spatial fragment, light enough to migrate and strong enough to anchor emotion. Composed of familiar materials: shopping carts, scaffolding, plywood, inflatables, these units “plug into” the city wherever voices need amplification. They are tactical and poetic, utilitarian yet utopian. At their core lies a belief that to protest is to belong, and that the built environment can nurture this belonging by refusing to render dissent invisible.

Our project arises from lived experience. The mass protests that rippled through Columbia University and across the city, where architecture itself became a participant. To build for protest is to build for freedom and safety, to assert that dissent deserves design.

We situate our modules at Columbia University, Foley Square, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Bridge – sites charged with layered meanings of privilege, history, and connection.

At the heart of this work lies a political and spatial desire, to create conditions of ethnic comfort within predominantly white neighborhoods, to make visible those who are too often peripheralized in the city’s visual and cultural field. By foregrounding immigrant and diasporic presence, the project insists that public space must not only tolerate difference but celebrate it. Architecture becomes a language of inclusion, not enclosure.

Our drawings mirror this ambition: figures rendered in multiple visual idioms – cut-outs, outlines, painterly strokes, occupy the same frame. They refuse the uniformity of representation, instead performing the multiplicity of the city itself.

Through our design, we also reimagine the very implication of a monument. ‘Soft Monuments’ reaches toward an identity that invites participation, within its boundaries and beyond, as opposed to the traditional monument, which demands distance, reverence, and silence. Where conventional monuments are edifices of observation, we propose architectures of engagement: tactile, porous, and alive to the urgencies of their moment.

Ultimately, this project dreams of a city where protest is not disruption but dialogue, to imagine that the city, in all its density and noise, can one day be generous enough to hold every voice that rises within it.

“The project addresses a compelling and contemporary theme of protest and civil rights, demonstrating how urban space can serve as a platform for collective action and social change. It offers not just aesthetic value but meaningful social impact.”

Yiqing Wu – Field Operations

“The project is an inspiring proposal of soft protest as a common sense of belonging and a driver of dialogue.”

Leonardo Zuccaro – PoliMi + COpE

In Indian cities, public spaces are often defined not by their design, but by their occupation. They evolve through use—improvised, contested, and constantly re-imagined. Livelihoods, intimacies, protests, and play all unfold in these supposedly “neutral” zones. What makes them public is not just access, but action. In this context, the Gariahat Flyover in Kolkata becomes a compelling protagonist. Space doesn’t possess a fixed identity. It is an experiential construct—formed through a collective, lived understanding. As Kazi Ashraf articulates in his talk ‘Space is Society’, space acts as a “lived body”, embedding memory, routine, inequality, and resilience. Spatial inequality is not accidental—it is systemic. In Indian cities, these layered asymmetries are most visible in the thresholds: in spaces like footpaths, alleyways, and flyovers.

 As Maria Cristina Cravino notes, “the city is conflict, just as society is conflict, but the conflicts that settle and the conflicts that manifest within each city depend on the city itself.” And nowhere is this more evident than beneath the Gariahat Flyover.

Spanning approximately 600 meters, from Rashbehari Avenue Crossing to Ballygunge Phari, the Gariahat Flyover is an arterial structure at one of Kolkata’s most active commercial and residential intersections. The area’s tempo is relentless. But beneath this gray overhead, another city pulses—quieter, fragile, and resilient.

The flyover’s shaded underbelly serves as far more than leftover space. For many, it is a roof, a refuge, and a right. Vendors set up stalls; families assemble makeshift homes; children run barefoot across tarpaulin floors. Here, the flyover gains agency—it becomes a surface of protection, no longer inert infrastructure but a living scaffold of marginalized urban life.This space is shared. It is multifunctional. A zone for sleeping at night becomes a market by day and a transit shortcut for pedestrians. It is a textbook case of informal use, livelihood layering, and the making of the public, private. The flyover’s “belly” is domesticated. Public land is folded into the personal through routines, repetition, and reinvention. A deeply public space acquires privacy in its corners.

When interviewed, Sabita Sardar, a long-time inhabitant, said: “I went to my son’s quarter but couldn’t stay for long.” This longing to return to the flyover underlines a truth: what we often define as “precarious” may be their normal. This so-called precocity hosts an alternative normal, formed in the city’s overlooked folds.From discarded billboard vinyls turned into roofs to bricks used as cooking stoves, the residents recycle the city’s waste to stitch together survival. They carry water to nearby kiosks. They are labour, service, and presence. Marginalized, yes—but integral to the urban system.

The underbelly of the flyover thus becomes a starting point, an urban threshold where alternative systems of living, trading, and resting emerge. This constant friction between the formal and the informal—between ownership and occupation—raises urgent questions: Can public space be owned? Who gets to belong?Their subtle presence on the margins, their quiet cohabitation without permanent appropriation, challenges today’s obsession with permanence and boundaries. In this fluidity, boundaries blur—who crosses whose space, who lives where, who belongs. The flyover becomes not just a road but a theatre—of collisions, coexistence  and empowerment, of the spoken and the invisible.

“The Urban Stich is intelligent in its simplicity and powerful in its purpose. It reveals how informal, improvised uses can redefine what we call “public space,” turning neglect into agency. It’s particularly interesting in how it works with the notion of the threshold, spatially, at urban scales, and socially, showing how these in-between spaces become zones of negotiation, coexistence, and resilience. Though rooted in its context, its insights are universal.”

Vincent Rault – Muro Atelier

In the dense urban fabric of Bangkok, footbridge quietly stretch above traffic-choked roads. Often overlooked and underutilized, these structures were originally designed to serve pedestrians but have become spaces people avoid—too hot, steep, and uninviting. Over time, this value has faded, leaving behind traces of failed urban planning scattered across the city.

The “Footbridges of Siam” project aims to redefine the role of footbridges in Bangkok, transforming them into vital components of the city’s social and spatial. By inserting simple, low-cost, and flexible public programs into these bridges, we want to transform these forgotten footbridges as community spaces. This initiative responds to long-standing urban issues such as the lack of accessible public areas, the issue of stray animals in the city, the neglect of the homeless, and disorganized street vending. Through a variety of modular units, these bridges can be transformed into spaces for relaxation, animal shelters, small-scale commerce, or even platformsfor public activities.

Our modular system is designed using basic, widely available materials such as round steel pipes, scaffolding joints, waterproof tarpaulin, and recycled plastic components. These materials are durable and allow the structures to be easily assembled, disassembled, relocated, or upgraded as needed. With a standard module size of 2×2 meters, the system allows for easy expansion and adaptation to suit the diverse needs of different neighborhoods.

The installation will be restructured every 3–4 months throughout the year to meet usage needs in each period. This approach helps prevent permanent occupation of the space.

We strongly believe this project has the potential to scale acrossmore than 30,000 footbridges and many other neglected urban spaces throughout Thailand, as well as in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Malaysia. Beyond footbridges, other underutilized spaces—such as areas beneath flyovers or vacant lots—can also benefit from this adaptable and inclusive approach.

“The Footbridges of Siam project successfully reimagines an obsolete urban structure, transforming it into a multifunctional system capable of providing shelter, activity, and programmable public space for a wide range of urban users. The proposal is both original and intuitively aligned with its context, enabling adaptable configurations based on each bridge’s location. This flexibility produces an immediate spatial and social impact while contributing to the city’s architectural identity by reframing everyday infrastructure and making it newly legible. The intervention operates within the framework of tactical urbanism, grounded in a typological pattern that recurs across many global cities. This gives the project strong scalability and implementation potential. Furthermore, the narrative and graphic representation are technically robust and clearly articulated, demonstrating precise attention to detail and a well-resolved design methodology.”

Alan Gancberg – Crucial Urbanismo

Trastevere, located in Rome, Italy, is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. Its traditional cuisine is deeply intertwined with the area’s identity. However, with the advance of urbanization, the aging streets and alleys, along with high food costs, no longer support the continuation of traditional culinary practices. The connections between streets, food, and people, as well as the neighborhood’s cultural characteristics, are gradually being lost.

To address this, we propose the Food Saves Trastevere initiative. Through a series of installations, we tackle issues such as outdated street infrastructure, barriers to neighborhood interaction, abandoned rooftop spaces, improper waste management, and graffiti, while embedding the processes of harvesting and preparing traditional ingredients into each installation and its corresponding street space. This creates a culinary map that begins with ingredient harvesting and preparation at Piazza Trilussaand reaches its climax at Piazza di Santa Maria. Traditional cuisine is no longer treated merely as a finished product; instead, the culinary process reconnects people, food, and Trastevere.

“A very simple yet flexible idea, applicable anywhere, and able to temporarily yet immediately improve the urban microclimate of the cities. An additional plus is the graphic representation of the panel.”

Teresa Pontini – Urban Consultant

With climate change, big cities like New York face intense urban heat islands—summers burn the street and shade is a privilege. You can’t plant a mature tree in a week—but you can borrow the sky. Cloud Tactics arrives not as a structure but as soft resistance to extreme heat. Clouds are generated to raise humidity and cool the street, and the proposed kit is characterized by its adaptability and temporality: it is light and easy to install, clipping to streetlights, scaffolds, and poles; and, with wheels and nozzle control, the cloud migrates through streets, plazas, playgrounds, and parking lots, prioritizing areas where heat and vulnerability overlap over the course of a day.

After a quick installation, the portable mechanical kit connects to city water or a stormwater cistern, filters the water supply, and pumps the treated water through lines to the nozzle heads. Time-controlled spray is released between two mesh layers to form and hold the cloud: an upper function layer of Raschel mesh with approximately 50% openness slows wind and retains the cloud, while a lower interaction layer of monofilament mesh with approximately 60% openness allows mist to interact with people and guides a gentle drip. Sequenced modules assemble into temporary cloud-cooling corridors. Light voile on slender arms catches wind and softens glare, while pulses of fine mist cool the air; as the mesh breathes with the wind, shifting folds push the cloud, drifting along the corridor.

These tactical cloud-cooling corridors are suited to many urban scenarios—shaping a mist performance zone on an overheated plaza where people rest, gather, and dance; creating a cooling corridor along an open street where pedestrians walk and play beneath drifting clouds; or, in parks without mature trees, providing a moving moisture veil that helps vegetation survive extreme heat. As the kit returns seasonally and shifts to where it’s needed most, relief becomes a long-term civic ritual, fostering the growth of plants and civic life under the cloud.

“”Cloud Tactics” uses “cloud” as a light and portable cooling intervention, responding directly to the extreme summer heat in New York City. Its almost non-existent structure mirrors the concept itself, mist, mesh, and air, held at street scale by simple attachments on streetlights or the ubiquitous scaffolds across the city. This deliberately restrained design produces a surprisingly strong effect. It offers a tactical urban cooling, providing real moments of relief during the hottest hours and turning the presence of a cloud into a small, everyday urban ritual.”

Wei Dou – SWA Group

Urban Inflation is a tactical urbanism proposal that reactivates underused urban spaces in Ann Arbor through a network of inflatable, movable “bubble” structures. These temporary, lightweight, and cost-effective interventions reactivate forgotten or transitional urban voids—alleys, courtyards, leftover spaces between buildings by transforming them into vibrant social nodes for gathering, play, and exchange.

The concept of inflation works both physically and metaphorically. Physically, the project introduces pneumatic structures of varying scales—from small inflatable furniture and shaded canopies to large semi-transparent enclosures that attach to building façades or extend across open plazas. Metaphorically, Urban Inflation speaks to the expansion of social life, the breathing-in of vitality into spaces that have been deflated by neglect or underuse. The bubbles become adaptive urban prosthetics: soft, temporary, and inclusive, responding flexibly to shifting patterns of use, seasonality, and user needs.

Each installation invites participation. Visitors can rearrange smaller pieces to form relaxing nooks, social pods, or resting spots. Larger inflatable modules can host impromptu exhibitions, performances, or collective gatherings. Made from recyclable and lightweight materials, the bubbles can be easily assembled, moved, or deflated—demonstrating a sustainable and reversible approach to urban activation.

Through these interventions, Urban Inflation challenges conventional boundaries between architecture and event, permanence and ephemerality. It envisions a city that breathes and transforms, where space is not fixed but continually negotiated by its users. By occupying the overlooked edges and in-between zones of the urban space, the project reimagines what “public space” means in a contemporary academic environment—an adaptable, shared, and joyful infrastructure for spontaneous interaction.

Ultimately, Urban Inflation celebrates the transformative potential of inflatable design to create meaningful social impact. By giving form to the city’s invisible and overlooked spaces, it expands the possibilities of urban life and regenerates the existing urban fabric—making the city not only more dynamic, but also more adaptable and vibrant.

“”Urban Inflation” starts from a simple yet smart concept: using inflatable structures to occupy the kinds of small urban gaps that people usually overlook. It doesn’t take on the posture of “changing the city,” but instead uses the lightest possible touch to turn corners that were never considered spaces into temporary places to pause. The inflatable material is used in a natural way, and let the air define its own shape.”

Wei Dou – SWA Group

Let’s Play! is a conceptual spatial design inspired by the “temporary theatre.” It reinterprets street performance as a medium for cultural and community exchange. Through a sequence of interactive open spaces across Glasgow, the project reconnects the two banks of the River Clyde, revitalizes post-industrial structures, and transforms them into a narrative journey through the city.

Context and Analysis
The proposal occupies Glasgow’s historic Union Railway Bridge, once a vital artery of the industrial age and now an overgrown relic dividing the city. Its massive structure has become a barrier between communities of differing cultures and lifestyles, while the Clyde, once the city’s lifeline, has faded from daily urban life. The viaduct thus offers a chance to bridge both physical and social divides and to revive Glasgow’s theatrical heritage.
Addressing broader urban challenges such as limited dialogue among communities, river pollution, underused waterfronts, industrial waste, and the city’s persistent gloom, the project introduces low-cost, interactive installations. These small, adaptable, and replicable interventions seek to restore vibrancy to public space through participation and play.

Design Strategy
Celebrated for its street art, Glasgow provides fertile ground for transforming performance into public experience. The design introduces a chain of open-air stages linked by a continuous greenway atop the viaduct. These installations serve as platforms for artists and gathering points for residents, inviting people to re-enter the abandoned industrial landscape and reconnect through shared experience.

Rain Theatre
With rain falling most of the year, gloom has become part of Glasgow’s rhythm. The Rain Theatre transforms this persistent rainfall into music. Using a custom echo system made from recycled rainwater pipes, it turns gray, rainy moments into a spontaneous urban symphony.

Floating Theatre
Once central to Glasgow’s identity, the River Clyde has drifted from public life. The Floating Theatre reactivates the river with movable platforms for performances and open-air films, celebrating river culture against the city’s skyline. Audiences watch from boats, reconnecting with the water and enlivening neglected waterfronts.

Landscape Tower
Inspired by historic cranes, the Landscape Tower features a rotating lift which people can use to filter debris from the Clyde. It serves as both a reminder of environmental decay and a call for civic participation. Over time, its perforated frame becomes a habitat for aquatic life, symbolizing regeneration through ecological engagement.

Marimba Walkway
Repurposing abandoned railway tracks into a playable path, the Marimba Walkway echoes the rhythm of the marimba. Mechanical linkages embedded in spiral stairs trigger tones with each step, allowing visitors to rediscover the site’s history through sound and motion.

Conclusion
Together, these installations form a tactical network that communities can build, adapt, or relocate. By intertwining art, ecology, history, and inclusivity, Let’s Play! shows how tactical urbanism transforms industrial remnants into participatory landscapes. Viewing regeneration as an ongoing, collaborative process, the proposal preserves Glasgow’s cultural legacy through creative engagement, reimagining forgotten structures as open stages that unite diverse communities and narrate the city’s evolving story—its past, renewal, and shared future.

“Let’s Play!” transforms a metheorological phoenomenon into an urban event. The project has a playful nature and a developed technical resolution that makes it provocative yet feasible. It carefully engages with overlooked elements in architecture, such as water and sound, to deploy it as an urban strategy that makes us reconsider the role of architectural elements such as roofs and floors, and how they can respond to transitory conditions in the city.”

Pablo Castillo Luna – À la Sauvette

Reclaiming Our Streets: A Community-Led Vision for Katowice’s Unused Spaces.

In 2022, a legal mandate to improve pedestrian safety led the city of Katowice to install bollards across more than 70 central parking spaces. These 1,700 m² of valuable city-centerspac, once dedicated to cars, now sit empty—a network of urban voids in dense residential areas. What began as a legal obligation has created an unexpected opportunity. In response, we organized a social action to ask residents a simple question: How can we reclaim this space for the community? Our goal is to demonstrate that even a small, grassroots change can inspire a powerful reflection on who urban space truly belongs to.

Understanding Community Needs

To anchor our proposal in local demand, we initiated a direct survey, engaging over 100 residents of all ages. We created four temporary installations in blocked spaces, using them as conversation starters to explain the project and gather feedback. Beyond questionnaires, we made observational notes on how people interacted with the pop-ups—whether they stopped, sat down, took photos, or discussed the idea. The findings were clear: the vast majority loved transforming these spaces for themselves. Most respondents declared they would use these micro-parks in their everyday routine, and a significant share embraced context-specific designs tailored to location’s unique needs.

A Three-Step Framework for Activation

Our process is a simple, replicable framework for any community to activate neglected spaces:

Context-Specific Proposals

Based on our findings, we developed three parklet prototypes that respond to different neighborhood contexts:

This initiative provides a clear path for transforming symbols of urban neglect into vibrant centers of community life, one parking space at a time.

Activating ephemeral streams in urban areas by keeping up the flow!

Ephemeral streams in arid and semi-arid regions carry floodwater only a few days each year. Most of the time, they remain dormant channels. Urban narrative flow reimagines ephemeral streams in urban areas through the concept of “keeping up the flow.”

This project embraces the ephemeral stream not as a ruinous scar, but as a vital vein—not as a constraint, but as nature’s own tactical response to flooding and drainage, absorbing and channeling excess water, supporting biodiversity, and fostering climate resilience by creating seasonal habitats for wildlife. By aligning urban texture with this dynamic system and defining two scenarios—rainy season and dry season—we activate urban spaces that resonate with the rhythms of both city and nature.

Narrative flow reveals the elements, actions, events, and sequences that shape urban spaces and helps sustain the rhythm of interactions between people and their surroundings. This project identifies three spatial layers of intervention (spatial flow): Peripheral Layer (beside ephemeral stream), Suspended Layer (above it), and Embedded Layer (within it). Urban narrative flow proposes interventions through nature flow, movement flow, activity flow, and voice flow to foster continuity and fluidity of urban interactions alongside the ephemeral stream—keeping up the flow of city and nature.

Proposed interventions are based on activating existing site elements—such as street trees, bridges, and stairs—and creating new opportunities, all through the use of color, plants, and simple installations mainly made of wood and steel. Some interventions apply to both scenarios, while others are specific to the dry season scenario.

This project reimagines an ephemeral stream passing through the urban texture of Torbat-e Jam, a city in Khorasan province in eastern Iran. Locally, these streams are called “Kaal.” This Kaal connects two green spaces and two sports facilities, weaving through streets and neighborhoods. Yet it has been neglected: the adjacent street is underused, trees are poorly maintained, and the streambed has become a dumping ground for waste and construction debris. It is seen as an unsightly channel—an overlooked space emptied of life and interaction.

Urban narrative flow transforms “Kaal” into a dynamic thread that is not only a livelyurban space but also interconnects neighborhoods and brings together people, city, and nature—always filled with flow. It fosters social cohesion, climate resilience, and raises awareness about the role of ephemeral streams.

Urban narrative flow holds the capacity to be replicated in other cities across arid and semi-arid regions, wherever ephemeral streams pass through the urban fabric and face similar challenges.

What if urban voids—closed margins, infrastructural interstices, forbidden strips—were not mere suspensions, but reserves of possibility that currently separate people and communities? What if these residual spaces held the potential to rewrite the relationships between those who inhabit the city?

Our objective is twofold: to build trust between process activators and communities, and to activate currently overlooked spaces through simple yet incisive interventions capable of generating shared uses over time. We aim to make cooperation between different actors practicable by breaking down the economic, technical, and political barriers that prevent citizens, collectives, and institutions from undertaking urban transformation processes.

This vision gives rise to our proposal: an operational guideline for tactical urbanism that transforms void-as-obstacle into void-as-resource through rapid, participatory processes. It is not an object to replicate or a masterplan to impose, but an open tool for social and urban activators—organizations, movements, neighborhood groups, municipalities, communicators, researchers, architects. It enables clear, shareable, and operational connections between roles and skills. The method we propose is transferable. It adapts to each context, absorbing hyperlocal specificities without losing rigor or effectiveness.

The process was tested in Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital, where the UN buffer zone has separated two communities for decades. This demanding proving ground required prudence, reversibility, and constant negotiation between different political systems and  administrations. Applied in the field, the guideline was progressively calibrated based on process feedback. Listening phases, participatory mappings, and focused roundtables refined its operational syntax, making it clearer and more responsive to contextual complexity.

Operationally, the process begins with spatial mapping and participatory walkshops, where programs and actions are defined by a simple criterion: let the people choose. By analyzing six parameters—green areas, points of interest, existing elements for space activation, access points, barriers, and surface types—we produce a proximity map of opportunities and constraints. What is desirable and practicable to activate in the space in the short term takes shape in different configurations, calibrated on intensity of use, safety, maintenance, and co-management.

The outcome is a collective space project that unites rather than separates, mediates rather than excludes: a civic corridor capable of mending what the void had divided. Not a definitive solution, but a concrete first step—replicable, adaptable—toward more inclusive cities where margins cease to be fractures and become meeting places. Because transforming space means, first and foremost, transforming the relationships that move through it.

In Lima, we live behind walls, afraid of the streets.
There are no open spaces to gather, and children have nowhere to play. In the Año Nuevo neighborhood (Comas, Lima, Peru), most residents avoided public spaces, fearing crime and believing their neighbors would not come to their aid.

This sense of insecurity is linked to neglected urban areas and blank walls that block natural surveillance. The Libertad school, the most avoided spot in the neighborhood, was completely walled off—isolating children and leaving surrounding streets abandoned and unused. The truth is, the more we shut ourselves in, the more unsafe the outside becomes.

To break down the walls that confine us and reclaim public space, the Extramuros project creates conditions that invite residents—especially children—to take over the streets in creative and collective ways. As part of this process, we carried out four key actions:

Since the launch of our pilot project in 2019, we have renovated the entrance to Colegio Libertad and revitalized Parque Libertad, creating spaces that are safe, playful, healthy, and conducive to learning. What was once a neglected and avoided area has now become the vibrant heart of the community—a place of connection that restores life, trust, and civic pride.

The impact is tangible: 650 m² of newly created public space at the school entrance, 1,100 m² in the park, 200 m² of additional green areas, and 25 linear meters of murals. These improvements have directly benefited 1,100 students and 54,000 residents. Furthermore, local residents have established the Parque Libertad Committee, and all participating actors now collaborate through an Interinstitutional Working Group, reinforcing the project’s collective ownership and governance.

The EXTRAMUROS project is designed and implemented by a multidisciplinary alliance involving a local and an international association, a neighborhood-based organization, and an academic institution. It´s sustained through a diverse funding model that includes international cooperation partnerships, academic research grants, support from local institutions, and community-led self-management. To scale its impact, the initiative aims to offer technical assistance and advisory services for self-construction processes within the neighborhood and across other urban contexts in Lima. Additionally, the project seeks to activate the newly developed infrastructure through productive and community-oriented uses.

Leveraging the principles of Tactical Urbanism, EXTRAMUROS presents a forward-thinking, replicable, and scalable model for addressing urban insecurity. The project challenges the prevailing paradigm of fortified urban environments, advocating instead for the creation of inclusive, high-quality public spaces. These spaces are designed to be freely accessible and actively used by children, families, and neighbors—fostering a sense of ownership and collective responsibility. Through the reappropriation of streets and public facilities, the initiative contributes to transforming the neighborhood into a safe, vibrant, and equitable place to live.

Forming the southern part of Toulon’s harbor, the Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer peninsula encloses a cove known as the Lazaret Bay. Along the waterfront, poor land use prioritizes a major roadway over soft mobility and access to the sea, limiting its role in the city’s urban life. As a result, the coastline remains underutilized and lacks real synergy with its surroundings.

Additionally, this calm yet transitory inlet serves as a key passage for maritime shuttles—an extension of the city’s urban network—connecting Toulon’s port to various stops along the coast. These boats navigate through mussel farms and trace fluid, curving routes across the maritime landscape. A new route, reducing a 20-minute walk to a five-minute boat ride, was recently introduced between the Tamaris pontoon and Les Sablettes. However, this addition appears unnecessary and negatively impacts the bay’s biodiversity.

The Floating Shoreline seeks to revitalize and activate this coastal area by introducing new uses and an alternative way of inhabiting the space. Inspired by the boat bus route, a pedestrian walkway is integrated into the urban landscape, extending the waterfront and creating a new floating shoreline. This former boat path is reimagined as a pedestrian coastline, offering a fresh perspective from the bay toward the city.

The platform redefines the water’s edge, establishing new zones for fishing, swimming, and rowing sports. Additionally, it raises awareness of biodiversity loss, water pollution, and climate change. The nearby mussel farms help preserve traditional cultivation techniques, while the platform’s biohuts—artificial marine nurseries—restore biodiversity and regenerate marine habitats. These biohuts, filled with oyster and mussel shells, foster a circular economy around mussel farming.

Locally sourced materials are used, and a waste reuse cycle—stemming from mussel cultivation and fishing—shapes the structure’s design. Integrated visual signage educates users on these ecological practices and their environmental impact, encouraging engagement and awareness.

Ultimately, this project transforms and extends the waterfront into a dynamic floating shoreline—an active interface between the sea and the city. By fostering vibrant public spaces, it enhances both community life and marine ecosystems.

What urban problems occur when narrow alleys in urban villages encounter African migrants? What strategies should we use to address the issue of social co governance among different races in cities? Guangzhou, with its modern urban construction, is facing serious urban governance issues from African migrants, just like other major cities in the world.

As a Sino-African mixed community with profound historical accumulation, Sanyuanli in Guangzhou particularly highlights the contradictions in cross-border integration. It exposes various urban problems, such as potential housing safety hazards and space utilization issues, social governance and public security challenges, economic ecological fragility, as well as cultural exchanges and public services;Poor urban planning exacerbates the problem of social co governance among different ethnic groups, and the lack of public space not only prevents the area from meeting basic functions such as emergency evacuation, but also seriously affects the exchange and understanding of different cultures.

We attempt to propose a bottom-up spatial empowerment strategy to promote the symbiosis of diverse cultures. Driven by a set of low-cost and easily disassembled modular devices, we aim to tap the potential of space through flexible physical carriers, thereby activating the internal driving force of the community. The “seize every opportunity” micro-intervention specifically includes plans such as upgrading safe spaces, adding emergency facilities, meeting complex functional requirements, and connecting service nodes. In the process of participatory co-construction, we cultivate “economic – cultural” income-generating units, avoid the risks of cultural conflicts through preventive design, and enhance local adaptability in coordination with urban renewal and cultural heritage protection.

In March 2025, the Hong Kong Government announced a plan to gradually phase out traditional bamboo scaffolding technique in future public works in an attempt to replace it with metal scaffolds. For many decades, Hong Kong has been the only modern city in the world still using this scaffolding approach in construction practices, making bamboo scaffold structures at construction sites a notably unique scene in this Asian city. Known for its flexibility, cost efficiency and abundance, bamboo scaffolding has been widely used in constructions of varying scales and passed down through generations of specialised scaffolding workers, becoming a special defining mark of Hong Kong Architecture.

Now, with the abandonment of bamboo scaffolding in constructions, what can be done to preserve or even rejuvenate this nearly extinct craftmanship? Actually, bamboo scaffolding is only one of the many precious cultural marks that are fading out from Hongkongers’ lives: with the closure of small independent bookstores and Cantonese opera theatres under rent rise, the authorities’ clearance of ‘street economy’ and the trend of gentrification, various local cultures including spontaneous reading clubs at second-hand bookstores, ivory mahjong block and bamboo steamer craftsmanship, traditional drama and street food stalls are on the verge of disappearance in Hong Kong.

With this in mind, opportunities have been found at the underutilised space under the extensive footbridge system in Central, Hong Kong, which is reimaged as places and a test site for modular bamboo scaffold units providing diverse cultural programmes. These urban plug-ins, are not simply a physical replica of a specific cultural feature, but new urban nodes that reconnect communities by defending collective memory in a concrete jungle.

A social mechanism involving builders and various groups of event organisers is proposed to build a network of actors that collaborate to organise and perform the diverse cultural activities and construct the scaffold plug-in spaces that host them. This social concept embodies the vision that these local cultures could be preserved by not just introducing new physical spaces, but also fostering and weaving transdisciplinary social bonds.

To fulfil the principles of flexibility, modularity and portability, a modular component system is developed to organise the different types of scaffold structures (e.g., single-layered and double-layered scaffolds, diagonals, staircase and seating), which would then be combined and assembled to form plug-ins of various programmes, including workshop desk, bookshelf, food stall, exhibition panel, viewing deck and outdoor theatre stage, etc. Due to its light weight, the bamboo scaffolds can be easily moved to other locations for flexible reassembly into new functions as defined by users and event organisers. Lastly, as per the traditional craftsmanship, plastic robes are used to tie the knots of the bamboos.

Located within a typical Lilong neighbourhood in Shanghai, this project proposes a tactical prototype for reimagining the everyday public spaces of one of the city’s most distinctive urban fabrics. Instead of demolition, the project promotes incremental, community-led renewal, where long-term residents and newcomers share dense living environments and limited resources.
Through observing daily activities, the design reveals hidden links between domestic routines, communal needs, and informal street life. These insights are translated into a series of modular, low-cost intervention – kitchen extensions, water collectors, energy generators, and shared workshops etc. – that reorganise the in-between spaces of the Lilong.
Built from simple, readily available materials such asmetal tubes, timber planks, and polycarbonate sheets, the system operates as a self-build toolkit. Residents can assemble, adapt, and extend components as needed, transforming neglected corners into productive, social, and ecological infrastructures.
The interventions collectively create a circular urban ecosystem, where water, energy, and waste are reused within the neighbourhood. This closed-loop network enhances sustainability while empowering residents to participate directly in the regeneration of their community.
By merging architecture, craftsmanship, and everyday life, this project demonstrates how small-scale, tactical actions can ignite broader urban transformation. It redefines the Lilong as a living laboratory- a hyperlocal yet scalable model of participatory urban renewal that celebrates adaptability, resilience, and shared creativity.

Karataş neighborhood, built on the slopes of İzmir, is one of the city’s steepest and most layered areas. Life here is shaped by inclines, hills, and stairways. These stairways exist not only to overcome differences in elevation but also as pathways for gathering, encountering, and conversing in the city. Children play, young people sit, the elderly catch their breath, musicians leave their melodies on the steps. Karataş tells a multi-layered story through both its topography and its human relationships. Yet the stairways, the most vivid stage of this story, are growing increasingly silent in today’s Turkey. Public space, under rising pressure, surveillance, and censorship, has turned into a terrain of control; the voice of the streets has been muted, and the language of art silenced.

MERDİVEN is an urban call developed in resistance to this regime of silence. The project seeks to transform Karataş’s stairways from mere paths of transit into a topography of public expression and freedom of speech. Each step serves as a counter-stage against censorship. The public space becomes a place not of fear but of creation, not of silence but of expression. This new spatial network allows the reappearance of suppressed voices and repressed colors within the city.

In Turkey, artistic and intellectual production has long been systematically restricted. Bans now operate not through explicit orders but through an internalized fear. Artists, writers, students, and academics are compelled to consider the consequences before they even begin to think. Self-censorship has become the most effective form of surveillance in contemporary society. MERDİVEN constructs the physical form of freedom of thought and expression against these invisible mechanisms of control. Each step makes a silenced voice audible again: a musician sings here, a dancer turns their body into an instrument a few steps above, a painter inscribes resistance on the wall, a poet writes verses on the stone steps.

The project’s physical setup consists of recycled metal frameworks, textile surfaces, and lightweight panels. Portable, adaptable, and open to intervention, these structures are, in keeping with the nature of art, temporary and flexible. This temporariness is itself a political stance: rather than erecting a permanent monument, it creates a public stage that can be rebuilt every day and transformed at any moment.

MERDİVEN proposes a layered public fabric where sound marks the return of art, action embodies collective creation, and memory gathers these acts in the city’s consciousness. Each step, each wall, becomes a stage where suppressed cultural memory becomes visible again. In the end, MERDİVEN is not only an effort to reclaim the stairways of Karataş but to restore the spirit of public space itself. Every melody echoing through İzmir’s steep hills is not merely an artwork, it is a sign of a society finding itself again. MERDİVEN is a call: we want back our voices, our colors, our stories. And every step is not simply an ascent, it is a word becoming free once more.

The Interlocked Kit is a system of simple, thoughtfully designed pieces of urban furniture that can be ordered and assembled by anyone. It makes a tactical urbanism intervention accessible and actionable for communities. It targets the gap between vision and implementation by offering a process that is affordable, time-efficient and energy-saving.

Step by Step

The flattened Maslow’s pyramid challenges the traditional, hierarchical view of needs. We believe access to quality public space is a fundamental right that must exist alongside basic needs like safety or shelter, not as a luxury reserved for those who’ve fulfilled them. This reframing creates a parity scenario where meeting one need doesn’t exclude meeting another, benefiting all public realm users.

A car-dominated area is the perfect place to test the interlocked kit, as it highlights the need to reclaim space for public use. The parking lot is located in Xalapa, Mexico, and primarily serves the Municipal Theater, the Transit State Office, two schools, a University and a significant number of surrounding services. Currently, the main entrances of all these buildings lack appropriate space to welcome their users. The most concerning situation is that of the students, who are the primary users of the area, accounting for hours of daily permanence but in the general picture, pedestrian circulation is unsafe and largely dictated by cars, which dominate the environment.

The project aims to change this dynamic by transforming the parking lot into a public square. Three scenarios have been proposed, each differing in the level of pedestrian activity, the functions of the public spaces, and the days of the week in which they take place. The Interlocked kit’s flexibility allows for the creation of a vast variety of scenarios, making it possible to modify areas ranging from contained to large in size.

The first scenario uses half of the parking lot to create spaces for everyday life of residents and students. The second scenario reimagines the area as a park for families and friends, to enjoy weekends together and take ownership of public space. The third scenario introduces a local market that strengths the local economy and promotes conscious, sustainable consumption.

Antalya’s coastal edge, once a vital interface between the city and the Mediterranean landscape, has gradually turned into a fragmented and inaccessible territory. Over time, urban expansion and topographical challenges have produced a chain of neglected, residual spaces — places filled with potential yet forgotten by daily urban life. Incidental Spaces: Living Network proposes to reclaim these overlooked terrains through the principles of tactical urbanism, creating a resilient and flexible public space framework that evolves through time.

The project envisions a “living network” of modular walkways, viewing decks, and adaptable platforms that traverse the steep cliffs and connect the city back to its coastline. Each intervention operates as both a temporary and catalytic act, initiating transformation through low-cost, lightweight, and easily assembled structures. The design emphasizes reversibility and adaptability — interventions that can expand, shift, or dissolve according to ecological processes and community needs.

Methodologically, the project follows a phased and participatory approach. Beginning with small-scale prototypes in underused areas, it invites local involvement, fostering ownership and stewardship. These micro-interventions create moments of pause, gathering, and observation — transforming forgotten voids into shared urban experiences.

Beyond its physical form, Incidental Spaces: Living Network aims to restore the lost relationship between people, place, and ecology. By blending landscape, infrastructure, and architecture, it constructs a new narrative of coexistence along the edge — where the natural and the artificial negotiate balance.

Ultimately, the project demonstrates how short-term tactical actions can generate long-term urban resilience. It is a manifesto for a city that grows by listening to its landscape, proving that meaningful urban change does not always require monumental gestures, but rather, thoughtful and incremental acts of design.

Palacký Square reflects a common story of many Central European towns: once a lively civic heart, it was gradually overtaken by cars and transformed into a parking lot and transport hub. The project Urban Flow seeks to reverse this trend through a temporary, low-cost intervention that tests how residents respond to reclaiming the square as a place for people rather than vehicles.

The aim is to reintroduce human scale, movement, and social life to the town center. The design supports walking and cycling, strengthens local businesses, and enables cultural and educational activities organized by nearby institutions. Concerts, theatre performances, markets, and outdoor school lessons could once again take place in a barrier-free, flexible space.

Recognizing the deep-rooted pro-car mindset of residents, the proposal adopts a gradual strategy. Instead of removing all parking at once, it introduces modest spatial rearrangements and temporary installations to initiate change. These elements act as catalysts for reimagining the square as a shared civic ground.

The main motif – the painted river – projects the flow of the Divoká Orlice across the square as a delicate, meandering line inscribed with the names of local villages. A parallel ribbon carries verses from Karel Jaromír Erben’s ballad The Oracle, referencing the nearby “Erbenka” pine and the legend of the golden bell. Together, these inscriptions connect local geography, memory, and imagination. Though temporary, the intervention visually and symbolically restores the town’s link to its river and cultural heritage.

Complementary street furniture follows a modular design based on a 40 × 40 cm grid. Wooden lamellas form benches and planters that define pedestrian zones, provide seating, and introduce greenery. Their light and adaptable form allows easy rearrangement and reuse.

At the square’s center, the Pier Pavilion rises above the painted river like a small pier above water. Its open wooden structure offers a shaded place to rest, meet, or host activities – coffee stands, exhibitions, or outdoor classrooms. Positioned along the historical axis between the Fountain and the Holy Trinity Column, it symbolically reclaims space once dominated by cars for public life.

Through minimal means, Urban Flow invites citizens to rediscover their town’s core. It demonstrates how temporary, playful, and participatory design can nurture identity, civic pride, and collective ownership – bringing vitality back to a place that had long belonged to traffic rather than people.

The project envisions a “living network” of modular walkways, viewing decks, and adaptable platforms that traverse the steep cliffs and connect the city back to its coastline. Each intervention operates as both a temporary and catalytic act, initiating transformation through low-cost, lightweight, and easily assembled structures. The design emphasizes reversibility and adaptability — interventions that can expand, shift, or dissolve according to ecological processes and community needs.

Methodologically, the project follows a phased and participatory approach. Beginning with small-scale prototypes in underused areas, it invites local involvement, fostering ownership and stewardship. These micro-interventions create moments of pause, gathering, and observation — transforming forgotten voids into shared urban experiences.

Beyond its physical form, Incidental Spaces: Living Network aims to restore the lost relationship between people, place, and ecology. By blending landscape, infrastructure, and architecture, it constructs a new narrative of coexistence along the edge — where the natural and the artificial negotiate balance.

Ultimately, the project demonstrates how short-term tactical actions can generate long-term urban resilience. It is a manifesto for a city that grows by listening to its landscape, proving that meaningful urban change does not always require monumental gestures, but rather, thoughtful and incremental acts of design.

Concept & Context
“Cooling is the New Cool” reimagines Alsancak as a living laboratory where climate resilience, civic life, and urban creativity intersect. The project begins with a simple but powerful belief: cooling the city means reclaiming streets as shared landscapes. Rather than relying on monumental infrastructures, it proposes tactical, small-scale, and reversible interventions that cool both the air and community spirit.

Alsancak, a neighborhood balancing sea breezes with asphalt heat, café culture with coastal promenades, becomes the testing ground for urban empathy. From Kıbrıs Şehitleri Street to the Kordon waterfront, each public space transforms into a microclimate stage where daily life, ecology, and design coexist. Tactical urbanism acts both as method and message a call for collective action against the Urban Heat Island effect, achieved not by building more, but by designing smarter, lighter, and together.

Design Approach
The project unfolds as a one-year roadmap of low-cost, adaptable strategies. Beginning with digital engagement and participatory greening, citizens map heat zones, plant lavender and olive, and co-create shaded micro-pockets. As seasons progress, cool pavements, pocket parks, and shared streets emerge like temporary performances each a small cooling act in the city’s choreography.

Materials are local and climate-sensitive: light-colored concrete, wood, stone, and reflective paints harmonize with İzmir’s sunlight. Mist systems, shaded seating, and vertical greenery provide both comfort and playfulness. Every intervention is reversible, modular, and transparent turning the city itself into a living experiment, with citizens as co-designers. Rather than imposing a singular architectural gesture, the project envisions a distributed network of micro-interventions that collectively form a cooling infrastructure.

The city functions as both a testing field and a platform for learning. Each intervention becomes a prototype, providing visible, measurable results while fostering community participation. Small-scale, tactical actions allow flexibility: streets, plazas, and parks transform in response to seasonal and social dynamics, creating a continuously evolving urban ecosystem.

Vision & Experience
“Cooling is the New Cool” is more than a climate strategy; it is a cultural shift toward civic awareness and collective care. Public spaces become responsive ecosystems where citizens feel, act, and co-create urban microclimates. In summer, shaded plazas, misted walkways, and green parklets serve as social magnets. In cooler months, these same areas transform into terraces, markets, and performance grounds.

The project embodies four core principles:

• Rapid, low-cost implementation with tangible impact.
• Participatory processes as drivers of resilience.
• Adaptability: each intervention serves as a learning prototype for future climate action.
• Integration of ecology, design, and community into a shared framework.

Ultimately, the project is a manifesto for urban coexistence. It cools not only the air but also the city’s tempo, restoring time, shade, and breath to public life. Architecture disappears into action, and streets become stages. Cooling is no longer a luxury it is İzmir’s new urban language. Tactical urbanism is its syntax.