Public Works Public Space: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig addresses the relationship between public works and public space throughout the residual urban territory newly revealed by Boston's Big Dig.  As new parks begin to open along the Rose Kennedy Greenway, there remain the primly ignored features that cannot be swept under the carpet of generic greenspace:  seven vent shafts, two intake shafts, traffic ramps, retaining walls, highway signage and other indicators of the sub-surface infrastructure not only occupy critical positions along the Greenway but also offer opportunities for architecture and landscape interventions that reformulate the original objective of the Dig.  Four unsolicited design proposals co-opt the residual sites of this post-pastoral landscape as locations for public space-making. These speculative design interventions ask: what is the nature of the public space produced by thirty years of public works?

Eric Höweler is a registered architect with twelve years of experience in practice. He received a bachelor’s of architecture and a master’s of Architecture from Cornell University. He has taught as a design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to forming Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Eric was a senior designer at Diller + Scofidio, and an associate principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. He is the author of Skyscraper: Vertical Now, published by Rizzoli/Universe Publishers in 2003.

Meejin Yoon is an architect, designer, and educator. She is an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of the Rome prize in 2005, the 5 under 35 Award in 2005, the Young Architects Award from the Architectural League New York in 2002, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Seoul, Korea in 1997. She is the author/designer of Absence, a World Trade Center Memorial artist book published by Printed Matter and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003. She also authored "emBodied Tectonics" in Material Process: Young Architects 4 by Princeton Architectural Press. She founded MY Studio in 2000 and cofounded Höweler + Yoon Architecture in 2004.