Maker

Mall Living

Artist Michael Townsend and his wife, Adriana Yoto, lived in a 750-square-foot space, rent-free, for four years. The Providence, R.I., couple managed to build an apartment inside the parking garage of a mall, all the while evading mall personnel and security. By Howard Wen

Thirty-six-year-old Michael Townsend and Adriana a coffee table, lamps, a TV set, a china hutch, and Yoto, 29, unofficially (and illegally) established a even portraits on the walls. Whenever possible, residence within Providence Place, a behemoth they bought these items from stores in the mall shopping and entertainment complex. In 2003, they itself. They ran electricity from an electrical cable took over an empty 750-square-foot storage room, connected to a working outlet in the parking which was walled off on three sides, in the mall’s garage. In all, Townsend estimates that they spent parking garage. about $5,000.

With the help of a couple of friends, they snuck While they weren’t homeless (the couple also in 90 cinder blocks and an industrial door to build lived in their own separate studio apartment), a fourth wall to close off the area. Inside, they set Townsend and Yoto and their friends spent quite up the usual apartment furnishings: couches, a rug, a lot of time hanging out in their mall homestead.

Photograph by Michael Trummerkind

34 Make: Volume 14