Digital Commons is a public space proposal for San Jose that responds to public life in a digital world. To the east and west are two zones that complexly intertwine nature, culture, and technology, exploring connection and disconnection within urbanity and digital life. Spread across these zones are a distributed Digital Forest, in which trees work together with new pavilions to provide free public WiFi through a wireless mesh network. Visitors navigate a lushly forested landscape, but enhanced with pervasive digital connectivity. Pavilions throughout sponsor a diversity of physical and online activities, while providing stations to plug in, sit down, and charge up. Nestled within the Digital Forest are enclosures called Reflectories. These spaces afford the rare opportunity to disconnect. Each Reflectory is clad in a mesh enclosure through which cellular signals cannot penetrate. Designed in varying sizes and configurations, individual Reflectories afford space for deliberately offline activities ranging from meditation, to conversation, to group discussions. At the center of the proposal is an area called the Observatory. Comprising an expansive elevated platform that bridges the Guadalupe River and an immense elevator tower, the Observatory explores the various ways that we see and are seen in today’s digitally expanded public sphere. The elevator stops at grade to load passengers before traveling 200’ into the air to provide dramatic views of the surrounding urban context, and finally lands at platform level. The platform is designed in accordance with the pixel-logic of the digital image. From some altitudes, it appears to blend into the surroundings as a seamless aerial image; while from others, the cellular logic of the platform surface becomes clear, appearing as a low-resolution glitch in a hi-res context. From the platform, occupants are afforded views of the riparian zone below, while one’s motion along an energy-harvesting kinetic floor activates dynamic lighting visible from the surroundings, the air, and even digital satellite. Team: McLain Clutter, Cyrus Peñarroyo, Reed Miller, Anne Redmond Year: 2020