Design Actions for the Global Gaze. Evolution and Contradictions of Temporary Installations in San Francisco’s Public Space

This paper focuses on a case of the gradual corporatisation of temporary interventions in San Francisco, California. Here, the creation of ad hoc programmes for proposing, advancing and maintaining provisional public spaces in the city has challenged the essence of previously recognised bottom-up practices, contributing to hidden forms of spatial and social exclusion. The analysis of this case is an opportunity for critical reflection on the controversies and contradictions generated by the upscaling of what started as a way to claim rights over spaces and to raise the possibility of non-traditional forms of producing and maintaining the public space.