As you may have seen on social media, we decided to take a different approach when it came to the look of Next City’s pavilion at the ongoing World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia. We enlisted Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC to design the pavilion, called “Innovative Americas” and now on display in the city’s Plaza Mayor Convention Center. Working closely with Next City Creative Director Anthony Smyrski and local partners Proyecto NN over the last few months, Riano created a space to reflect the curated selection of civic innovations that will be up for discussion.

“Exhibition booths are often anonymous spaces with little potential for meaningful interaction,” Riano writes in a blog post explaining the modular space’s structure. “The Innovative Americas booth is designed to facilitate discussion and questioning through flexible elements that allow multiple uses.”

Posters, for instance, are replaced with “cubes that can be taken out of their frame, examined and used as seating.” Depending on how you flip the features, it can be a bleacher, chalkboard or bookshelf.

Proyecto NN, a public interest design collective, led the construction on-site. The elements of the pavilion, designed for reuse, will be donated to local community and arts groups. Read more the its design here. See views of the space in the slideshow below. For updates and photos directly from the conference, follow @InnovAmericas on Twitter.