hckrnws

"Secret Mall Apartment" is a documentary on Netflix that includes a lot of the videos that Townsend took during the whole project. (There's a few stills in the article.)

It's quite interesting to watch, because Townsend himself is quite the character. There's a scene where he's having an argument with his (now ex) wife that shows that Townsend has extremely different priorities than the typical person. (And why his first marriage failed, too.)

When I learned that this person was one of the RISD art students who started Fort Thunder, it all made a lot of sense to me. That was by all accounts a very strange and unique intentional space for people who didn't want to live in a conventional manner.

Here's an archive of the old Fort Thunder website:

https://web.archive.org/web/20091025093813/http://fortthunde...

(2018) Also, the old picture shown on the page wasn't the State Prison on Smith Hill (where the mall is now); it's the Adult Correctional Institution in Cranston-the octagonal stone building from 1878 is still used as a maximum-security prison.

These days you'd be caught by the surveillance network on the first day.

But there wouldn’t be a new mall, either.

We need more mixed use development like this