In contemporary cities, many social experiences, stories, and spaces remain underrepresented or underutilized, despite their importance to community life. Through design, these conditions can be reimagined: not simply through objects or environments, but through systems that foster connection, expression, and belonging.

Here you can find student work developed in collaboration with the Rideau‑Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre, located in the Rideau Community Hub in Ottawa. Grounded in research, co‑design, and speculative exploration, the projects address questions of inclusion, cultural visibility, participation, and resilience. Together, they explore how design can strengthen the social fabric by making stories visible and transforming spaces into places of shared meaning.

The works are organized into two complementary sections.

Stories That Connect

This section explored storytelling as a design practice that reveals lived experiences often overlooked in everyday urban life. Through interactive artifacts, services, and systems, students translated stories of migration, aging, resilience, and care into embodied and participatory experiences. These projects invite reflection and empathy, highlighting design’s role in fostering understanding, belonging, and shared identity.

This section focused on placemaking through the activation of underutilized spaces within the Rideau Community Hub. Students reimagined areas such as the drama room and shared workspaces as sites for gathering, cultural expression, and celebration. Working at the scale of systems, these projects demonstrate how design can transform space into place through participation, collective use, and long‑term community resilience.