This project explores the role of human interaction plays in place-making and aims to answer the question: how can we enable more ownership over public space? Can we increase flexibility and adaptability to in turn enable urban spaces to be more multi-functional – and ultimately foster a better social cohesion? Can parks better respond to individual users’ needs and habits while still working as a collective, permanent and sustainable urban structure?
Park Ex is a mobile app, created as site-specific experiment for Prospect Park, located in Brooklyn NY. The app maps data (gathered both actively and passively) around people’s movements, activities, interests, and levels of comfort in the park, to define specific uses and atmospheres throughout the outdoor space, at different moments in time. The idea is to leverage existing data around what’s happening in the park to create a better collective experience. Park Ex also helps facilitate social interaction between people with similar interests, while fostering a sense of belonging and community.
The digital app also has a counterpart in the physical space in the form of a responsive structure of knitted mesh fabric. The textile structure absorbs, collects, and delivers light, acting as a physical signifier of the data collected through the app.
Individual project done in the context of Prof. M. Newcomb’s Interaction Design I studio, Pratt Institute, Winter 2016.