W.Ting Tsai
Architecture & Urban Designer
Whisper Wall
WHISPER WALL aims to engage the community of all ages, especially the students, located strategically in Poughkeepsie school parking lots. We anticipate this project to be built with local organizations such as Nubian Direction and documented by Spark Media. The process of the building showcases how Poughkeepsie students can work with urban designers as a non-profit platform to begin the transformation of the streetscape in Poughkeepsie. The Whisper Wall is an interface featuring pipelines as a communication device to talk and listen. We will establish a relationship with members of Spark Media in the first phase, recording their responses to questions such as “speak to the city”. The recordings will be played at the final installation to the public as an interactive component. The second phase is the building of the self-standing wall structure and colored pipes with members from Nubian Direction. This temporary installation will be open to the public for a week in a parking space near Poughkeepsie High School for the community to speak and listen to opinions through the Whisper Wall in phase three. The process of building and public event will be documented by Spark Media as a community engagement effort to collect and share the voices of Poughkeepsie. This documentation can be shown at Spark Media’s annual film competition, Reel Expressions International Film Festival as an entry piece. With the Whisper Wall, We rethink the process and scale of urban design interventions to start small and grow locally.