The Future is Unwritten: Matthew Mazzotta, The Main Idea

The Main idea was developed by Matthew Mazzotta as a model for working with communities suffering from disinvestment and transforming them into distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges.

The Main Idea mobilizes communities, local government, artists, designers and architects to reshape failing downtown cores into creative and sustainable spaces for new business and social life. Through direct community engagement, these spaces, from single buildings to entire neighborhoods, are designed, built, and programmed to restore the most important aspect of civic life: the human connection.

Similar to the intentions of the founders and dreamers who originally built these downtowns years ago, The Main Idea aims to totally re-conceptualize these iconic spaces, transforming the currently vacant buildings into thriving sites of public engagement and community health. Each project is tailored to its local context and aims to affect real social, economic and political change.

Mission

PHYSICAL: Design and build innovative spaces utilizing existing structures as well as locally sourced materials and labor. Reinvent the spatial aesthetics and function of the downtown core for 21st century use (from buildings, to blocks, to entire downtowns).

SOCIAL: Develop and implement community-specific programs that directly strengthen community life by engaging local people in all aspects of the process from conception to function - with a key focus on sustainability.

ECONOMIC: Invest in local people and creative businesses through direct funding and training; increase the regenerative capacity of businesses, properties, communities, people and the earth.

RESEARCH: Operate as a first-of-its-kind think-tank and research center for artist-led projects in small-town main streets and the communities around them. Highlight and archive best practice through resources, conferences and networking.

Outdoor Living Room

Each of Matthew’s projects begins with the community being invited to attend an Outdoor Living Room placed in a well-trafficked public space. “We bring the meeting to you.” This forum encourages informal discussion and allows for stories and ideas to be heard and recorded. During these discussions, community members reveal specific memories, desires, and secrets of the place where they live.

Pictured (clockwise from top left): Outdoor Living Rooms in Louisville (Kentucky), Wheaton (Maryland), Albuquerque (New Mexico), Springfield (Missouri).

The power of the Outdoor Living Room model lies in its ability to transcend economic and cultural borders and capture voices of people that may not otherwise have time to attend more formal meetings. Its freeform conversational structure allows people to speak about issues that rarely are discussed as a community.

Pictured: Outdoor Living Room in Jeddha (Saudi Arabia)

The Storefront Theater

What happened in Lyons, Nebraska has happened to communities throughout the United States. Small Town Main Street has suffered as goods, services, entertainment—and the jobs that go with them—move away. In the Outdoor Living Room, residents of Lyons spoke about businesses leaving the town—the kind of slow violence of disinvestment which has left many rural downtowns empty.

The Storefront Theater is a unique event space that transforms Main Street into an outdoor theater by using an abandoned storefront wall in downtown Lyons as its site.

The wall is modified with two hydraulic cylinders so that the awning and false front fold down over the sidewalk with the push of a button, providing seating for 100 people. Both the seats and the screen retract and disappear when not in use, giving the impression that there is nothing unusual in this town, leaving only word-of-mouth accounts for inquiring visitors.

Since its opening, The Storefront Theater has hosted a number of events organized by the people of Lyons and the surrounding towns and cities.

These include several movie screenings, video game nights, and music concerts from local and international musicians as well as anti-bullying educational events.

During the construction of the theater, a local retired postman who dabbles in movie-making (creating sci-fi films with his cat as the main actor) asked to be a part of the project. Together, we turned the Lyons downtown into a movie set and the townspeople into actors to create the movie ‘Decades’. To help the amateur filmmaker realize his dream of creating a feature film, over 100 people from this 850-person town volunteered by following his shooting schedule and showing up in period costumes and their vintage cars.

On opening night, the Main Street, which is usually empty after dark, filled with people to watch the movie ‘Decades’—the story of Lyons from its founding to the present moment, leaving locals to question what comes next for them.

What has followed is the blossoming of a low budget film community in Lyons, bringing in people from all over the world to participate and witness, as well as the opening of an art gallery next door.

Open House

York, Alabama bears witness to the abandoned buildings, which are a constant reminder of the white flight that took place decades ago after segregation ended, when certain homeowners left the area and let their houses fall into disrepair.

The metamorphosis of Open House is designed to require cooperation. It takes four people one and a half hours to unfold the structure. The foundation is made of used railroad ties which anchor the custom fabricated industrial hinges to five rows of stadium seating. The rows of seats fold down with the aid of a hand winch and enough manpower to counter balance the hefty but agile structure.

Residents enjoy events in the Open House in York, Alabama.

Residents enjoy events in the Open House in York, Alabama.

NEIGHBORS

The Ryves neighborhood of Terre Haute, Indiana, has been plagued by high rates of disability, substandard housing, food insecurity, low income, and limited education. Not only did cycles of disinvestment take away significant businesses and amenities, it also led to the demolition of the buildings. Our vision is to revitalize the downtown experience that was lost years ago and enhance the quality of life in the neighborhood.

NEIGHBORS is a unique interactional work of public art, which includes two house-like structures that transform into a functional downtown with a variety of configurations for multiple uses. The eight storefronts allow for creative programming to address community-identified ‘needs’ such as health and education events, teaching job skills and creating opportunities with the City. Other orientations fulfill the community’s ‘dreams’ for different activities, including theatrical productions, music, movies and art events as well as a big town square experience.

NEIGHBORS is being facilitated by a consortium of 28 local organizations united around the mission of transforming the neighborhood and overseeing the use as well as programming of the structure into the future. The project is currently supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Mayor's Office, Vectren Energy and the Indiana State University among others.

Matthew Mazzotta leads a team of artists, architects, designers, and researchers to work at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape human relationships and experiences. Matthew’s projects have been named “Architecture Project of the Year” from the Dezeen Awards at the Tate Modern, London to Huffington Post’s “9 Design Projects Tackling America's Poverty Crisis, One Community At A Time” and have received dozens of international art and architecture awards.

Matthew Mazzotta received his BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Masters of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology. He is a TED Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.