With more than 17,000 users and inhabitants, the EPFL site constitutes a main urban piece of the West-Lausanne (Switzerland) agglomeration. The campus is currently going through a major renovation, including the pedestrianisation of roads to improve the quality and quantity of campus public space. “Avenue Piccard” is one of the cornerstones of the upcoming EPFL campus pedestrianisation, which will involve major changes to the infrastructure. Significant construction work is expected in order to reshape the Avenue into a high-quality public space. However, concerns about the climate impact of these interventions raise the question of whether it is possible to support social activity with minor, adaptable interventions such as temporary furniture. We therefore undertook an experimental study on Avenue Piccard in order to answer the question: Do temporary interventions foster social activity?

Our experimental study builds on a tradition of quantitative urbanism, complementing it with recent developments in computer vision. We used cameras to track an area of Avenue Piccard in its current state, then intervened with temporary furniture such as outdoor tables, chairs, benches and reclining seats, and measured the outcome. The objective was to map the location and type of activities that take place at Avenue Piccard, and to determine if social activity (defined as talking, sitting and eating in groups instead of as individuals) changed due to the intervention with temporary furniture.

We found that Avenue Piccard is used in a multitude of ways, in addition to being a major thoroughfare. It facilitates group meetings, individual seated and standing people, lunch-spot and a quick-stop for tying shoelaces or fixing a bag. There is a cyclical rhythm to the activities, which can be observed in the peaks of each day and each week. The weather affects where activities take place, but does not affect the total number of people that visit or pass through the site. The interactions that users of Avenue Piccard have with the objects on location (i.e. the rocks, signs, cars, trees) change according to the group size and duration to stay. Furthermore, even before the intervention, large groups enact ownership of the paved and unpaved street: standing for long durations of time and moving only marginally for passing people, cars or bikes. After the intervention, there was an addition of large sitting groups as well: which was virtually impossible pre-intervention. The intervention furthermore brought a new type of activity to this area: working and studying. Our findings suggest that before the intervention, this area was not underutilised but it was underserviced. The addition of lightweight, movable furniture changed the size of groups, the duration of their stay and the type of activity that took place on site. This furniture did not substitute the existing activity at Avenue Piccard, it complemented it with an increase in options. We recommend the addition of furniture across campus in an effort to diversify the possibility of social activities to take place.