This thesis work is a collaboration with fellow designer Ilana Duby.

Abstract:

The built world becomes public space as it relates and communes with the bodies that inhabit it. Strategies for building this space seek to economize and expedite design based on an imagined body, fictitiously constructed of medians and averages. This body relies on a single perspective of a proportional and cognitive ideal that we understand as normativity. These standards limit possibilities and construct a narrative of who can participate and who cannot. This work questions what happens when design looks beyond simple function for a particular type of body. Instead, it involves designing spaces and objects that encourage new forms of acceptable behavior and consider all bodily experiences within the public sphere. Staged in the Moynihan Train Hall in Midtown Manhattan, we frame our critique of transit hubs as placeless, unengaging, in-between spaces that seek to direct, classify, and restrict the diverse body landscape.