Downtown Enlightenment

Bringing delight, social interaction and education to one of Tucson’s historic sites, the Ronstadt Transit Center is the key drive for this ephemeral installation. Once a hub for public interaction when it was built in the early 1900s, it is now a dystopian space that segregates the homeless people who primarily occupy the space, lower income individuals ,students and business workers.

After brainstorming, prototyping, learning about the existing social issues and finalizing design, we built our project around the principle of bringing shade/cooling for comfort, vegetation for smell, and most importantly promote individuals to collaborate (all while educating about a current water issues). The material was all made of recyclable items, primarily water bottles that were collected from recycling centers and students from the University of Arizona.