RISD / INTAR / Thesis 2026
Providence Puzzle
A distributed exhibition system that turns Providence into a city-scale spatial narrative, assembled through fragments, sites, and public pauses.
Design Principles
Each intervention works through four shared principles. Frame directs attention toward overlooked views, traces, and thresholds. Insert introduces small structures into existing urban conditions without dominating them. Layer allows archival images, text, sound, reflection, material traces, and present-day views to overlap. Pause creates moments where visitors can slow down, gather, listen, read, and look again.
Project map
Hover a numbered point to preview the site photo. Click to open the corresponding intervention below.
Markers use the original site coordinates from the exhibition map data.
1
Water as the First MachineMaking / Rising Sun Mill
2
Jewelry, Craft, and Urban PrecisionMaking / Jewelry District
3
Where Trade Leaves Its TraceMaking / Green Jacket Shoal
4
Art as Industrial AfterlifeImagination / The Steel Yard
5
A City Lit TogetherImagination / WaterFire Park
6
Creative EcosystemImagination / Riverside Pavilion
7
From Landing to HomeBelonging / Fox Point / India Point Park
8
Daily Life Builds CommunityBelonging / Federal Hill / Omni Pavilion
9
Land, Memory, and PresenceBelonging / Neutaconkanut Park
10
Changing the River, Changing the CityResilience / River Center Park
11
After the HighwayResilience / 195 District Park Pavilion
12Care at the Water's EdgeResilience / Collier Point Park
Four Topics
The four thematic groups stay as a reading system for the city: Making, Imagination, Belonging, and Resilience.
A City of
Making
Water power, mills, jewelry, fabrication, maritime trade.
A City of
Imagination
Industrial afterlife, public art, creative institutions, civic atmosphere.
A City of
Belonging
Arrival, settlement, everyday rituals, home-making, land memory.
A City of
Resilience
Rivers, highways, environmental repair, waterfront access.
Renderings
Making / Rising Sun Mill
1. Water as the First Machine
ContentThis site tells the story of Providence’s industrial origin through water power. Rising Sun Mill connects the Woonasquatucket River, mill architecture, labor, and early manufacturing.
Design ConceptThe blue linear structure is inspired by moving water. It becomes a bench, frame, display surface, and guide, allowing visitors to read water as the first machine behind the city’s growth.
Making / Jewelry District
2. Jewelry, Craft, and Urban Precision
ContentThis site presents the Jewelry District as a place shaped by craft, precision, labor, and redevelopment. It reveals Providence’s history as a major jewelry manufacturing center.
Design ConceptThe pavilion takes the form of a cut gemstone. Its faceted blue volume and translucent surfaces suggest reflection, cutting, and polishing, framing the district as one of Providence’s cultural jewels.
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Making / Green Jacket Shoal
3. Where Trade Leaves Its Trace
ContentThis site reveals Providence’s maritime and industrial past through ship fragments, debris, and hidden underwater remains near India Point.
Design ConceptThe design is inspired by scattered relics on the riverbed. Tilted blue boxes and fragmented forms hold material traces, turning the water into an archive of trade, absence, and memory.
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Imagination / The Steel Yard
4. Art as Industrial Afterlife
ContentThis site shows how Providence’s industrial identity continues through art, craft, welding, ceramics, metalwork, and public fabrication.
Design ConceptRed frames and translucent panels extend the existing steel structure. The intervention moves through the industrial skeleton like fresh blood, presenting making as a living continuation of the past.
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Imagination / WaterFire Park
5. A City Lit Together
ContentThis site tells the story of WaterFire as a collective public ritual, where fire, music, smoke, water, reflection, and crowds transform the river into a civic stage.
Design ConceptThe red arch-like structure is inspired by flame, bridge, and gathering. It holds light, sound, and interpretive surfaces, keeping the atmosphere of WaterFire present in everyday life.
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Imagination / Riverside Pavilion
6. Creative Ecosystem
ContentThis site presents Providence’s creative network near RISD and the downtown riverfront, where schools, artists, institutions, and public life overlap.
Design ConceptMirrored surfaces create a kaleidoscopic space above and below. The pavilion reflects visitors, city, river, and structure together, making creativity visible as a connected urban ecosystem.
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Belonging / Fox Point / India Point Park
7. From Landing to Home
ContentThis site speaks about arrival, migration, and home-making. India Point was once a waterfront gateway, while nearby Fox Point became home to many immigrant communities.
Design ConceptThe roof shifts from a wave-like curve into a stable shelter. This transformation suggests the journey from crossing water to finding protection, settlement, and belonging.
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Belonging / Federal Hill / Omni Pavilion
8. Daily Life Builds Community
ContentThis site presents belonging through everyday life: food, churches, small businesses, sidewalks, music, conversation, and repeated neighborhood rituals.
Design ConceptThe pavilion is inspired by a living room or neighborhood porch. Seats, tables, woven surfaces, and hanging speakers turn a public corner into a shared room for gathering and listening.
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Belonging / Neutaconkanut Park
9. Land, Memory, and Presence
ContentThis site speaks about land memory and Indigenous presence. Neutaconkanut Hill holds a deeper relationship between landscape, shelter, gathering, and care.
Design ConceptThe yellow frame is inspired by shelter, hill forms, and woven surfaces. It creates a quiet threshold for pausing, gathering, and acknowledging the layered memory of the land.
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Resilience / River Center Park
10. Changing the River, Changing the City
ContentThis site tells the story of Providence’s river relocation, when hidden and blocked waterways were uncovered and transformed into civic public space.
Design ConceptTwo green structures act as a time corridor. Historical images, present views, and future visions are layered together, allowing visitors to move through the river’s transformation.
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Resilience / 195 District Park Pavilion
11. After the Highway
ContentThis site speaks about rupture and reconnection after the relocation of I-195. Former highway land becomes park space, pedestrian connection, and new public life.
Design ConceptThe design uses stitching and layering. Interlocking tables, chairs, and ground patterns repair the divided edge, while translucent images overlay the former highway onto the present park.
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Resilience / Collier Point Park
12. Care at the Water’s Edge
ContentThis site addresses environmental justice, waterfront access, and the relationship between South Providence, industrial infrastructure, and the river.
Design ConceptThree mirrored moments frame ground, bridge, river, and sky. Each layer reflects a different condition: environmental burden, transition, and a more open future for the waterfront.
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