TED Fellow Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape relationships and experiences. His community-specific public art projects integrate new forms of civic participation and social engagement, revealing how the spaces we travel through and spend our time living within have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical and meaningful exchanges.

Mazzotta works with local residents to invent spaces -- from active systems that convert dog waste into energy to light city parks to physically transformable buildings that turn main streets into movie theaters to traveling dining experiences that bring together chefs and climate scientists to serve meals made of local plants endangered by climate change.