Services: Concept, Branding, Front End, Back End
Key Takeaways
- dozens of participatory organizational involvement
- a city wide roll-out of civic engagement and participation
- novel interaction of physical and digital worlds, a transversal experience
This project is still evolving, with upgraded web effects, a closer interaction with the physical door, and new New York City areas planned!
Doorways2Destiny is a citywide public art and civic technology project installed across a dozenb locations in Chicago. Each site features a steel doorway frame and a community-painted door panel — a collaboration between local artists, residents, youth groups, and partner organizations. The sculptures function as neighborhood landmarks, but also as thresholds: moments where everyday movement meets collective imagination.
The core idea is simple: If stepping through a doorway symbolizes possibility, can it also connect people to real opportunities nearby?
Working with Welder Underground, a non-for-profit organization aimed at education, job skill, and training under-represented communities and underserved youth to be leaders and solid wage workers of tomorrow, we constructed giant door frames out of a thousand pounds of raw steel. Then added a blank door for installation as a pure canvas for community expression.
To support the physical idea, I designed and branded a digital platform that pairs each physical doorway with a location-aware web experience. Visitors can explore a custom Mapbox interface, learn the story behind each sculpture, and then “step through” the door online — a brief animation that mirrors the physical act before revealing resources within a one-mile radius of the installation.
Each Door Detail page foregrounds the community-painted door, treating it as the visual and cultural anchor of the experience. The digital transition leads directly into a Local Opportunities view where users can browse programs, workshops, community events, and civic resources drawn from public datasets and partner organizations, all dynamic content pulling and triangulating from public civic data.
The project blends public art, web technology, and neighborhood storytelling into an integrated system: the physical sculptures create awareness and presence, and the website extends that encounter into tangible pathways for engagement.
Doorways2Destiny positions art not as an endpoint, but as an entry point — a way for residents to see their neighborhood reflected back to them, and to step toward the opportunities that shape its future.
Technologies: Figma, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Fabrication