Re-grouping: Fiberglass Cubes as a Civic Toolkit for Philadelphia's 40,000 Vacant Lots

Philadelphia has over 40,000 vacant lots. That number alone tells a story of disinvestment, but it also represents an extraordinary canvas for tactical intervention. Re-grouping takes that canvas seriously, proposing a system of lightweight fiberglass cubes that can be deployed across the city's neglected streets, infrastructure gaps, and forgotten squares to generate instant, affordable public space. The modules are internally lit for nighttime use, movable, and endlessly reconfigurable: a single unit might serve as a bench, a bike rack, an art pedestal, or a planter, depending on what a neighborhood needs at any given moment.

Designed by Shannon McLain and Petra Stanev, Re-grouping was shortlisted in the Urbanscape: Symbiosis competition. The project roots itself in Philadelphia's existing culture of grassroots reclamation, where residents, artists, and cyclists are already mending potholes, converting empty blocks into gardens, and filling public space with murals and skate parks. Rather than proposing a top-down masterplan, the designers offer a distributed toolkit that amplifies this bottom-up energy with a coherent visual and spatial system.

Mapping Neglect, Plotting Activation

The site plan reads less like a conventional drawing and more like a field guide. Watercolor vignettes and annotations are overlaid on a gridded street map, identifying the specific vacant lots, infrastructure gaps, and underperforming public squares where modules could be deployed. The approach is deliberately non-prescriptive. Instead of fixing locations for permanent installations, the plan marks a constellation of opportunity sites, acknowledging that the city's needs shift seasonally, culturally, and politically. Philadelphia's grid-based, brick-built DNA provides the spatial logic; the modules provide the flexibility.

Nine Strategies, One System

Two diagrams lay out the operational grammar of the project. The first identifies nine distinct urban intervention strategies through isometric and plan icons: from beer gardens and block parties to temporary classrooms and art installations. Each strategy describes a social scenario rather than a fixed program, emphasizing that the same physical unit can host radically different activities. The second diagram categorizes nine cube typologies by function, spanning seating, display surfaces, play structures, and landscape elements. The cube form is deliberately simple, echoing children's building blocks to signal accessibility and imagination.

What makes this legible as a system rather than a collection of objects is the geometric neutrality of the unit. Its dimensions and fiberglass materiality make it scalable, reusable, and cheap enough for city-wide deployment. Assembled across multiple sites, the cubes create a recognizable visual identity, a kind of civic brand that links disparate neighborhoods into a shared network of participatory spaces.

Street-Level Proof: Seating and Crosswalks Reimagined

The photomontages ground the system in real Philadelphia conditions. One image positions a proposed street seating installation beneath residential towers, with silhouetted figures occupying the cubes as casual, informal furniture. The modules sit confidently in the existing streetscape without trying to compete with the architecture around them. A second montage shows a pedestrian platform with geometric paving at a tree-lined crosswalk, suggesting that the cubes can also redefine movement patterns, not just rest points. Together, the images argue that even small, modular insertions can shift the atmosphere of a block from neglected to activated.

The use of silhouettes is a smart representational choice. It avoids prescribing a specific user demographic and instead suggests that anyone could inhabit these spaces. The internally lit units also hint at the project's potential to extend the usability of public space well past sunset, a critical consideration in neighborhoods where darkness often signals danger rather than opportunity.

Why This Project Matters

Re-grouping makes a compelling case that urban design does not always require permanence or massive capital investment to be meaningful. In a city where civic space is shrinking and development pressure is accelerating, a lightweight, reconfigurable system offers something rare: the ability to respond in real time to local needs and cultural energy. The project treats Philadelphia's 40,000 vacant lots not as liabilities but as latent infrastructure, waiting for the right catalyst.

McLain and Stanev have designed something that sits at the intersection of product design, urban strategy, and community organizing. The fiberglass cube is simple enough to be deployable tomorrow, yet its systemic logic is ambitious enough to reshape how a city thinks about public space. By positioning the public as an active stakeholder rather than a passive consumer of designed environments, Re-grouping argues that the most resilient architecture might be the kind that invites everyone to rearrange it.

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About the Designers

Designers: Shannon McLain, Petra Stanev

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Project credits: Re-grouping by Shannon McLain, Petra Stanev Urbanscape: Symbiosis (uni.xyz).