Public Displays of Affection: Social Infrastructures and the City

Anna Boiarchuk

Co-Presenters: Individual Presentation

College: Michael Graves College

Major: BA.ARCHITECTSTUDIES

Faculty Research Mentor: Stephanie Sang Delgado

Abstract:

This project is developed as part of Public Displays of Affection: Social Infrastructures and the City, an exhibition that reimagines public infrastructure as a participatory and socially engaged practice. Within a group of six designers, each addressing a different component of civic infrastructure, this proposal focuses on the billboard as a site of social transformation.

Traditionally, billboards function as tools for commercial display, shaping the urban environment through one-way communication. In response to the exhibition’s call to rethink everyday infrastructure, this project reconceives the billboard as a participatory social platform rather than a static advertising device.

Through architectural design and spatial experimentation, the proposal transforms the billboard into an interactive structure that supports collective expression, storytelling, and public engagement. By integrating tactile elements and adaptive structural components, the installation invites visitors to actively participate in shaping meaning within the space.

The project examines how architectural intervention can shift outdoor advertising infrastructure into a dynamic civic interface. In doing so, it challenges traditional boundaries between viewer, message, and structure, positioning the billboard as a framework for collaborative authorship and urban interaction. Ultimately, the work contributes to the exhibition’s broader inquiry into how design can expand collective agency and reimagine social infrastructure in the contemporary city.


References:

Klinenberg, Eric. Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. Crown, 2018.

Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Revised edition, MIT Press, 1977.