Design Team: Jaime Correa

Pop ups supply a medium for the production of the natural metabolic processes in cities; they are a means for the transformation of unused urban areas according to one’s own living, productive, commercial, or promotional needs. Pop ups are generative structures for the production of what Ray Oldenburg has called “Third Places”. Each one of the MIAMI POP UPS is designed to occupy an open parking area of 64 ft X 24 ft (the equivalent of 3 double parking spaces).

The MIAMI POP UPS are inhabited by five unique uses representing the iconographic value of one letter in the alphabet. The “M” is the abode of a small “Marionette theater”; the “I” is an “Incremental bench” with a public bed of impatient flowers; the “A” is an “Art wall” where arts and crafts are traded and bartered; the second “M” is a “Market stall”; and the last “I” is an “Illuminated lantern”. Together, they spell the word MIAMI. The visual and narrative form of this kind of iconographic typography provides not only a rich source of inspiration but also a key to redefine a new project for the city.