We began with a provocative question: How might we join as urban activators in the larger physical, economic, and cultural forces that produce urban space? The culmination of our three-week project was designing and building staging for a TEDx Madrid Salon event in the San Cristobal de los Angeles neighborhood, which could be re-purposed after the event for a variety of uses by the community.

 In partnership with existing community organizations, we:

• Conducted needs-finding research among neighborhood members, as well as secondary research on current uses of and organizations involved in the event space
• Prototyped and refined the staging design with input from community members
• Constructed four lightweight, portable, staging structures for use during the TEDx event and beyond
  
• Developed branding and a social media identity for the event space, "Puente de Colores"
• Created a guidebook to our research and design process, as well as assembly instructions and suggestions for use in ongoing community programming

My personal contributions to the project included:

• Providing leadership for the community engagement team for the project, which included:
  • Leading a mini design sprint to identify key questions and issues for community members
  • Initiating intercept interviews with community members
  • Assisting the creation and hanging of interactive posters around the community
  • Gathering and documenting input from the community for use in the design of staging modules
  • Recommending uses for the staging structures following the TEDx event
    
• Helping to assemble the staging modules for the TEDx event
• Authoring content and contributing photographs for the project chronicle and staging structure usage guide for the community