This year, we announced our partnership with the City of Boston’s Second Public Space Invitational (PSI), a contest that encourages collaborative ideas that transform Boston’s public spaces. This open call to creatives in the Boston area commands attention to spaces where Boston residents live, walk, and work, placing intuition and aesthetic first and foremost in new designs that can improve unused spaces.
The PSI branches into three categories:
- Analog Challenge: seeking traditional, but scalable and innovative approaches to improve the streetscape;
- Digital Challenge: seeking projects that experiment with technology, sensors and a generally connected world;
- Bonus Challenge: a partnership with the MBTA and Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Matthew Hincman to help a winning team make bus shelters, specifically those at Mattapan Station, more inviting, beautiful, and comfortable.
Together with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Boston Art Commission, we were honored to sponsor this year’s PSI Digital Challenge.
We’re pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Public Space Invitational, seven innovative teams that are producing unique projects across the city of Boston and beyond to keep residents engaged in public spaces.
The winners are:
Analog
Night Garden
Location: Boston Day and Evening Academy, 20 Kearsarge Rd., Roxbury
Proposed by: Ethan Vogt, Mihai Dinulescu, Shawn Flaherty, DiDi Delgado
Night Garden is a light installation designed to create a space for evening food and performance events in Boston Day and Evening Academy’s community garden.
Egleston #StreetMurals #MuralesEnLaCalle
Location: Egleston Square, Jamaica Plain
Proposed by: Luis Cotto, Dorothy Fennell, Sydney Hardin
Egleston Square Main Streets seeks to implement a community-designed street mural at the intersection of Boylston Street and Egleston Street in Jamaica Plain’s Egleston Square neighborhood. This would become one of the City’s first street murals.
Franklin Street (Allston) Neighborway
Location: Franklin Street, Allston
Proposed by: Mark Chase, Viola Augustin, Tom Bertulis
Using on-street murals, pavement markings and high-quality planters, the applicants intend for a community-led slow street intervention on Franklin St. in Allston to prioritize pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
Digital
Public Radio
Location: TBD
Proposed by: New American Public Art
New American Public Art’s proposal includes installing a functional, larger-than-life radio in a City park or public space.
The Public Stage
Location: TBD
Proposed by: Liat Racin, Matan Mayer, Mariko Davidson, Christina Usenza, Alon Dagan
The proposal will use synchronized light and sound to link to an orchestra’s soundscape through a livestream audio transmission to Boston’s urbanscape. A light display will illuminate the space with attractive colors synchronized in real time to the volume and timbre of the performance.
Bonus
Radiant Forest
Location: Mattapan Station
Proposed by: Chris Freda, Ryan Collier, Jhanea Williams, Anthony Lawson
Radiant Forest is intended to transform the Mattapan bus station platform into a dynamic and delightful work of art that celebrates the shelter utility with an array of translucent-colored screens just beneath the glass panels that form the station’s covering.
Real People, Real Stories: Mattapan
Location: Mattapan Station and/or Bus Stations in Mattapan
Proposed by: Professor and Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges and Jennifer Waddell
The proposal includes a series of printed photographs and poems based on interviews with current residents of Mattapan. The portraits and poetic texts would be displayed on digital monitors within or on the exterior of the clear outdoor waiting shelters, or via free-standing outdoor digital media enclosures.
Read the City of Boston’s Press Release on the 2016 Public Space Invitational, including full project descriptions and Honorable Mentions, live on the City of Boston Website.