Yuanrui Wang

My thesis investigates how pop-ups (short-term and low-cost projects) can transform a site, lead to shifts in the way people perceive and use space, and ultimately lead to longer-term permanent changes. The RISD campus is an urban campus. School buildings are dispersed around the city and there are limited outdoor public spaces where students can gather or meet across departments. The location of this project is the brick plaza between Metcalf Building and the RISD Museum. Given its location near the museum and a cluster of school buildings, this plaza could be considered the “heart” of the campus. However, the plaza is often used as a parking lot for cars and there are no seats or other site elements that allow people to use the space as a social gathering space.

For this project, I propose using simple, low-cost, and temporary materials to reclaim this plaza for pedestrians and reposition this space as a social and civic commons for the campus. Using duck tape applied to the ground along with folding chairs, this project was able to accomodate facility vehicles that needed to use the plaza while also t encouraging people to slow down and to use the space to relax and socialize. Using research methods and post-occupancy site observation techniques from our discipline I was able to see a significant increase in both the number of people and the amount of time that people spent in the plaza.