The Accidental Room
At the end of the 20th century, Providence Rhode Island began reinvigorating the city by revitalizing Providence Place Mall. The mall had great success and another developer began the Fort Thunder development nearby. Our protagonist, Michael Townsend, lived in the area and watched his neighborhood be destroyed by these large retail developments and surface parking. Townsend noticed in the midst of construction that there were two walls erected side by side, but they did not touch. After the project was finished, the cavity was never sealed – and naturally he explored the opening. The opening led down a corridor that opened up to a 750sf room that was unoccupied and forgotten. Townsend and some friends seized the opportunity to reclaim the space as their own in protest against the developments.
The
group repurposed the space as their own personal condo where they could live
part time. They moved items, food, and even furniture into the space – in broad
daylight. The group leveraged the daily milieu of the mall to move in a couch
and china cabinet into the apartment. Once the furniture was situated, they
made their own cinderblock wall and installed a locked door so they could
occupy the apartment in secret. The group then proceeded to tap into the mall’s
power grid to light the space and installed their own television and play
stations into the apartment. After over four years of occupancy, the group had
a functional kitchen and were close to creating a makeshift restroom with
plumbing.
While
the group was ultimately caught, I find this to be a wonderfully charming
example of a space created from adjacent junkspaces that was also initially junkspace
but transformed into something privately occupied in protest to the junkspace.
Townsend was convicted of misdemeanor trespassing, but the irony of the
situation was that the junkspace created the problem in the first place. The
individuals reclaimed some of their agency in the junkspace’s midst.
Source: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/
I love that you brought up this episode of 99 percent invisible, its one of my favorites. This provides us with an example, however unique, of how to navigate the edges of junkspace and even possibly reclaim some of junkspace. I wonder how we could leverage this anecdote on a larger scale as we start to recognize and react to junkspace.
ReplyDeleteI like this as a small scale version of Made in Tokyo. What this group did was inhabit the so called in between space. They saw opportunity while developers saw a waste of space. It makes me wonder what other spaces would turn up if we let the non designers of the world create the in between spaces of the world.
ReplyDeleteI like this small example of junkspace and its reclamation by the people. Just as we talked about congestion and how people CHOSE that form of living, I think that this example clearly shows that Capitalism hinders much of this society from taking control of their lives fairly, due to the make-up of the economic system.
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