International Design Week, Université du Québec à Montréal, QC, 2010-1. Site: Varied dimensions; linear lumber, wood stain, and graffiti. Collaboration with 20 design students and Professor Céline Poisson. Starting with an investigation of the beach as an archetypal public space, and concrete poetry as a form of textual expression that engages the space of the page, we proposed a model that seeks to bring new life to this urban fragment, Place Pasteur in downtown Montréal. “The student effect" was a theme developed to celebrate student life, but also to invite university students to reclaim the site as a territory of their own, counterpointing to the fact that the project was located in front of the central administration. The process culminated in the creation of a new spatial reference, a new field often referred to the group as a "landscape of happiness," translated here by a multitude of yellow tones. This new field is comprised of a series of "floating islands,” in contrast to a site’s rigid neoclassical geometry. On the floating islands all sorts of activities can take place: sit, eat, sleep, read, talk, study, meet, drink, smoke, do nothing. This project is the collective work between spmb and twenty students, performed during the International Design Week, an annual event at the School of Design at Université du Québec à Montréal, in May 2010.