By: Temporary Services
Publisher: Chicago, IL: Temporary Services, February 2013
Pages: 2
Dimensions: A5 booklet folds out to A1 poster
Cover: soft cover
Binding: folded
Process: offset
Color: full color
Edition Size: 1000
ISBN: none


This poster-booklet is the result of over fifteen years of photographic documentation and research on the variety of modifications and inventions that people make in public. From roadside memorials to piles of unused bicycles, people consistently alter shared common spaces to suit their needs, or let both man-made and natural aberrations run wild. The result is a new kind of public space that lies just outside of ideological articulations – with creative, inspiring, and sometimes confounding moments that push past the original planned design of cities.

Public Phenomena continues to demonstrate to us that people will always find ways to resist plans others make and try to impose on them, whether through direct defiance or quiet misuse. This inspires us to learn from city spaces and the people that use them rather than seeking to impose aesthetics on these spaces.

This publication is related to 3 others that we have made: Public Phenomena [Booklet]; Public Phenomena [Book] - PRINT and PDF; and Mobile Phenomena.