Buchanan Mall · Exploratorium
Turning residents’ priorities into temporary park installations
Buchanan Mall is a five-block park in San Francisco’s Western Addition. At the Exploratorium, I worked in research and project management as our team helped residents turn their priorities into models, full-scale prototypes and temporary park installations.
- My work
- User research, design research and project management
- Team
- Exploratorium Studio for Public Spaces, residents and community partners
- Project record
- Temporary park activation · 2016 in the original case study
Project context
Problem: Residents had little influence over changes to their surroundings
The project entered a neighborhood shaped by displacement and redevelopment. Earlier planning had often left residents with little influence over decisions about their own surroundings. Safety concerns and mistrust of institutions shaped the conditions for the work.
Green Streets and Citizen Film had already brought residents together through storytelling and community meetings. The Trust for Public Land engaged the Exploratorium to contribute design, prototyping and fabrication expertise to that conversation.
Our task was to help a community task force of elders, young people and working adults develop its priorities into something that could be built.
Research and priorities
Turning residents’ priorities into design constraints
We built on the earlier community work with story-mapping exercises. Participants described their experiences of the park and mapped places that mattered to them, helping the team understand concerns that demographic maps alone could not explain.
Community priority
The five blocks needed to feel connected.
A repeated element could give the park a shared identity while making room for local stories.
Documented community priorities
Residents asked for an element repeated across all five blocks. The installations also needed to reflect neighborhood history and resident leadership.
What we developed
Develop gateways and places for neighborhood stories
The team worked with residents on a common structural framework. The eventual activation combined gateways with gardens and audio domes sharing local stories.
Community priority
Safety concerns shaped the structures.
Lighting and clear lines of sight needed to be part of the design.
Documented community priorities
Earlier community work identified safety as a concern, with attention to lighting and visibility across the park. Story maps added residents’ experiences of particular places.
What we developed
Carry visibility and lighting into the prototypes
Those concerns became constraints as the team developed models and full-scale structures with the task force. The installation itself remained a temporary intervention to inform later improvements.
Design workshops
Giving residents several ways to develop an idea
The workshops progressed from reference images and stories to sketches and physical models. Each format gave participants another way to express what mattered and develop an idea with the team.
Reference images
Discuss the places and qualities that resonated
Participants selected public-space photographs and explained their choices. The team used those conversations to identify shared themes and values.
Sketches
Add ideas to a common structural framework
Short sketching sessions let residents explore uses and expressions for a shared framework. This drawing adds planting, local history and other ideas to the proposed structure.
Models
Explore the installation in three dimensions
The task force used a model kit, adding clay, yarn, model people and other materials to develop how the structures might work.
Full-scale prototyping
Taking the structures beyond the tabletop models
The Exploratorium used iterative prototyping with visitors in its exhibit work. We adapted that practice to the park by developing models with residents, working on a full-scale mock-up in the studio and testing structures at events on the Mall.
Studio mock-up
Develop the structure at its intended scale
The full-scale mock-up let the team work through the structure beyond the models. The team presented an initial design to the task force and revised it with their feedback.
Installation and learning
Building a temporary activation across the five blocks
Green Streets, local young people, elders and neighbors joined the Exploratorium build team to construct gateways at the intersections of all five blocks, three garden installations and two audio domes playing local stories.
The repeated structures responded to the request to connect the park. The audio domes gave neighborhood stories a physical presence. The temporary installation was another stage of the process, giving residents something they could use, assess and continue to shape before more permanent improvements.
The temporary park installation
Planting, seating and lighting formed part of the built activation. The temporary structures were a step in the longer effort to improve the park.