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Secret mall apartment sos
2025

Dreamland Tulsa, OK

with

Jamie Pierson

Artist; Urban Designer; Educator; Community Organizer

Secret Mall Apartment— What's your Dreamland?

Our presenter will discuss the history of malls in America through an urban design lens, showing the utopian original vision of malls and how they changed through the development of car-centric communities. She will also discuss the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alexandra Lange and her title Meet Me at the Fountain, which tells the history of malls and discusses their ongoing reinventions as public and capitalist infrastructure. Our speaker will also discuss our local recently deceased mall and proposals to transform it while working with the audience to facilitate new ideas of what our dead mall COULD be.

Dreamland Tulsa, OK

Film Synopsis

In 2003, eight Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment inside a busy mall and lived there for four years, filming everything along the way. Far more than a prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all involved.

    In 2003, eight young Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment in a hidden space inside the Providence Place Mall and lived in it for four years, filming everything along the way. They snuck in furniture, tapped into the mall’s electricity, and even secretly constructed a brick wall with a locking door, smuggling in over 2 tons of cinderblock. Far more than just a wild prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all its inhabitants – a personal expression of defiance against local gentrification, a boundary-pushing work of public/private art, and finally, a 750 square foot space that sticks it to the man!

    Photo credit: Jeremy Workman

    About the Speaker

    Jamie Pierson is an artist, urban designer, educator, and community organizer based in Tulsa, OK. Under the name Scraps Designs, they partner with neighborhood groups, cultural institutions, and government entities to create public art and public space activations that encourage community interaction and playful engagement.