Interior Architecture
Adaptive Reuse
ON AIR
2018
Providence, RI
Culinary Studio
7,100 SF
Location
Building Type
Building Area
Transforming a historic armory into a political forum, the design repositions architecture as a driver of collective presence. Instead of preserving the building as a static monument, the intervention activates a civic interior that solicits participation across difference, turning a legacy of control into a stage for visibility.
Agora as Contemporary Civic Space
Sited within the Cranston Street Armory—a 1907 structure symbolizing military authority—the project intervenes in a neighborhood defined by social plurality.
Addressing the building’s current civic void, the proposal reclaims the vast drill hall as a modern Agora.
Here, architecture operates not as a tool of control, but as an instrument for democratic visibility, assembly, and public exchange.
Interior as Political Infrastructure
The design treats space not as a neutral container, but as political infrastructure that structures how voices are registered.
A continuous canopy spans the drill hall, redefining the volume both acoustically and visually.
Acting simultaneously as ceiling and projection interface, this surface supports real-time data and speech without fragmenting the collective scale, amplifying discourse through architectural form.
Participation, Media, and Real-Time Feedback
Bridging the gap between speaker and audience, the forum integrates digital participation into the spatial experience.
Live polling and social feeds are translated into visual information, projected instantly across the canopy.
By turning individual opinion into spatial presence, the architecture mediates between physical gathering and networked public voice, making debate both spoken and seen.
↑ Urban Broadcast Study (2018), Concept video
Cooking is reframed as a street-facing public signal—extending the event beyond the room to the city.
Reconfiguring the armory into an active forum, the project reframes architecture as a civic device—staging disagreement not as conflict, but as a visible, shared condition of democracy.
