My 1st-year studio, led by architects Oren Sagiv and Deborah Pinto Fdeda, investigated the terms ‘Private’ and ‘Public’ and the various questions these terms entail. My project, titled ‘Random Encounters – Private Moments in Public Spaces,’ was aimed at strangers experiencing a shared private moment in public space, despite their unfamiliarity with each other.
From an abstract storyboard to actual design, we followed two simple guidelines. The first – the shared experience must take place in public space. The second – the experience must connect two strangers through a transcendent moment which has nothing to do with health, nutrition, money, labor or the betterment of one’s status, but rather a moment of excess emotion and contemplation such as sharing a cigarette, listening to music, or gazing at the stars.
Such a moment, should it be carefully planned, may indeed bring even the most remote strangers together.