Design-a-Thon

“What might an imaginary of another public space be?” Brandt Knapp and Jerome Haferd ask—and look to the audience for responses. After a January cloudburst and abbreviated run-through of the projects that garnered them a 2020 AIANY New Practices New York award, the duo shepherded attendees into a back room at the Center for Architecture for a design charrette. Working with a limited set of materials (discarded studio books, Lego pieces), the group answered Knapp and Haferd’s prompt by building conceptual objects, then describing their high-minded intentions, putting everyone in a gleeful mood. The participatory event echoed the ethos that runs through the office’s larger body of work: design can happen anywhere, with whatever (and whomever) is at hand.