The Bentway: Human-Centric Design for Public Spaces

Bon Adriel Aseniero, Jacky Bibliowicz, Frederik Brudy, Sebastian Herrera, Tomas Lay Herrera, Brian Lee, Michael Lee, Jamie Nicholson, Dagmara Szkurlat, Lorenzo Villaggi, Kean Walmsley, Ray Wang, Pan Zhang, Dale Zhao
2024

In 2023, at Autodesk Research we partnered with The Bentway in Toronto to use wearable sensors and cameras to capture how people experienced the public space under Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. Participants joined "walkshops", recording video, audio, surveys, and environmental data, while algorithms analyzed what they saw and visualized anonymized facial contours. The project shows how participatory, data-driven methods can help design public spaces that adapt to community needs, improve wellbeing, and make feedback an integral part of the design process.

1-minute video preview
2:30 minute introduction to the project