ENTANGLED

Client: Little Haiti Cultural Complex & City of Miami

Location: Miami, FL

Service: Community Workshops, Design, Fabrication, Installation

Date Installed: 07/2019

Features: D5Mag, AIA BROOKLYN Pylon, KaBOOM!, Codaworx Magazine and more…

Awards: Art Director Club - Merit Winner; Better Cities Film Festival Selection

Entangled is a platform for residents and visitors to listen, learn, and share the history, stories, and music of Haitian culture outside the doors of the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. To create this project, we worked closely with the Little Haiti community and cultural complex through a series of participatory design workshops. Creating a playable platform that would not only spark conversation but feel as if it was a piece of the cultural complex reaching out into the public realm. The goal for this project was to provide a playful moment along the busy street and sidewalk that would get people to stop even for a moment and connect with one another and the existing Haitian culture within the neighborhood.

“When you look at this work, you automatically get the sense that this is a part of this community.”

— City of Miami District Commissioner

The social bench system provides a place for people to sit, listen, and converse on the neighborhood's past, present, and future and its Haitian influence. This is a neighborhood that is being drastically changed. With this project, we wanted to create an opportunity to celebrate the existing community and culture in this neighborhood. The intervention is made up of three aluminum drums formed from the traditional Rada Battery Haitian drums. We worked closely with a local drum maker to make sure the sounds were comparable to the traditional drums. The drums were then painted by a local Haitian artist Serge Toussaint with traditional paintings of historically significant monuments. The drums are connected by an undulating bench system that allows a multitude of social seating possibilities.