Michelle Laboy (l) with winning team from Sasaki

Assistant Professor Michelle Laboy served as juror for this year’s Public Space Invitational 2.0, a competition hosted by the City of Boston Office of New Urban Mechanics. Last year, Laboy was a recipient of one of these awards.

On July 6 at City Hall in Boston Laboy presented an award to one of the winning teams, which included Chris Freda (M.Arch ’12) and Jhanéa Williams (B.S. Arch, ’08), both alumni from the Northeastern School of Architecture. They were members of a team from Sasaki’s Urban Studio.

You can see more about their proposal here.

Project description

The Radiant Forest project is intended to transform the Mattapan bus station platform into a dynamic and delightful work of art that celebrates the fundamental utility of the station—namely shelter—with an intervention that replicates a more organic and cathartic environment for MBTA passengers. The project proposes installing an array of translucent colored screens just beneath the glass panels that form the station’s covering. These screens will be designed and printed to evoke the sensation of standing beneath a canopy of trees with green and yellow patterns filtering light and creating a dappling of light beneath the station. On a sunny day, passengers will be able to look up and see a collage of vibrant glowing leaf like shapes illuminated from above and filtering light down upon them. If the intended effect is achieved, passengers will see a mosaic of dappled light on the station’s platform. The design team hopes that this effect will both brighten and enliven the Mattapan Station waiting area and create an evolving and dynamic mural of light on the station throughout the day and across all four seasons.