Hidden in Plain Sight: Proactive Designer Instigated Projects

Abstract

This research is divided into two acts. The first act defines the hidden potential within the built environment that offers the chance for responding to the negative consequences of conventional development practices. The second act outlines a road map developed through a design instigated project that allows a designer to use their critical stance in identifying conditions within the built environment that should be altered in creating a healthier public domain and built environment The process takes strategies and thinking from “tactical urbanism” and pairs it with participatory design in appropriating landscapes to define a model of planning and design that changes the conventional process of “competition, outline plan, development plan” to “phases of informal activation as establishment and the cultivation of temporary use” (Oswalt 221). The resulting process is labeled as Proactive Design Loop, a hybrid method of design that promotes the creation of dynamic landscapes derived out of a partnership between the designer and a local community.