The full-scale model was built at the corner of Parker Street and Huntington Avenue on Northeastern University’s campus, remaining in-place for two weeks. A QR code was placed at each end of the intervention, leading those who scanned it to the project’s website page with a short description, images, drawings, and a timelapse of the construction process.
In only four days, over 300 passersby scanned the code to find out more about the project. If anything, this demonstrates the visual interest and eye-catching ability of the BarricAid - while its colors are bright and its form unexpected, the materials are based in pressing reality. By interacting with and questioning the module, pedestrians are led to learn more about the overarching opioid crisis and housing crisis affecting communities in Boston and cities throughout the country.
The BarricAid is a temporary intervention. It is scrappy and imperfect - it feels unfinished, incomplete. Yet this very nature encourages questioning, reimagining, and participation. In the context of a guerilla intervention in heavily impacted sites, the BarricAid can provide shade, a place to sit and rest, and even serve as a drug consumption site. Its incompleteness is intentional: a provocation that invites others to build upon it, critique it, and consider how temporary gestures can lead to lasting change. As a prototype, it does not claim to have all the answers. Instead, the BarricAid opens the door to new forms of engagement, advocacy, and design in the face of these systemic crises.
The next step is to test the concept further - to deploy it in real-world contexts, collect participatory feedback, and continue iterating. In doing so, the BarricAid may begin to inform more permanent, site-specific approaches to care, infrastructure, and harm reduction.
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