Paul Magee, Cosima Malandrino and Luc Berman

An interesting project idea emerged from a discussion with a ride-sharing platform in France, led by our colleagues Cosima Malandrino and Luc Berman. The platform providers were interested in implementing “safe collection areas for ridesharing” spaces to co-locate service and service user.

The waiting spaces would be located in a busy night-life area or around important social gatherings such as concerts, festivals or sports events.

As in airports or around train stations, users would be conducted to these areas through a ridesharing app but also that the space would interact with them as they approach. There, they would find a safe space where they could wait in a better environment than an obscure side-walk or alley way.

The local architecture can play a part in obscuring view (and signal) of an approaching vehicle (and equally, that of the waiting customer), so placement of waiting areas would be vitally important. Consequently, the design of the space needed to fit with the local vernacular but also to be more visible when it was needed. We also posed the question of how much shelter was realistic for the waiting period.

We decided to further the thinking that had already applied to the bus stop concepts, integrate with interactive services and experiment with materials that give the design a sense of value, aligned to the built environment.

Design Provocation (DP)1 is an elegant, free standing, self illuminated waiting space. When inactive the flush surface (shown here in white) is blank, but can also provide advertising space and variable illumination.