The Challenge:
When invited to exhibit at a well-known Chicago gallery, the IDC chose to focus on the reality outside the gallery doors. For the thousands of individuals living on the streets surrounding the gallery, survival depends on staying dry and mobile. Correspondingly, the goal for the project was to design a waterproof, insulated, and highly portable shelter using a $0 budget and only discarded materials.

The Intervention streetURCHIN is a lightweight, collapsible, and watertight urban tent constructed entirely from reclaimed plastic shopping bags, rubber bands, and used water bottles. The design utilizes the air-trapping properties of the bottles for insulation and structure,  and the overlapping layers of plastic for waterproofing. In order to allow the work to instigate a response from gallery-goers, the IDC did not send the gallery a tent, but a 12-step construction manual, thereby transforming the gallery into a distribution hub for open-source survival architecture.

The Impact By disseminating hundreds of these manuals, the IDC empowered the public to build alternative versions and engage directly with the crisis of homelessness. streetURCHIN proves that even the most humble materials can be engineered into life-saving infrastructure, shifting the focus from gallery aesthetics to radical, street-level utility.