Guerilla-Greening

As cities heat up due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, traditional greening efforts often unintentionally fuel gentrification, displacing the communities most vulnerable to climate impacts. Guerilla-Greening proposes a radical alternative: empowering individuals to reclaim agency over their environments through grassroots eco-interventions. Inspired by graffiti culture, Berkeley’s history of protest, and principles of design justice, the project calls for civil disobedience through greening.

How might we enable residents to protest environmental injustice and reshape their cities with accessible tools for grassroots action?

Guerilla-Greening equips communities with a toolkit for eco-civil disobedience, combining sprayable plant mediums, heat-reactive posters, and a community data-mapping platform. Instead of waiting for top-down interventions, residents can now visibly critique inequitable urban design, advocate for greener neighborhoods, and demand systemic change.

Final Design

The toolkit’s design was developed through multiple iterations, expert interviews, and material experiments, resulting in three main components:

• Sprayable Plant Medium: Using a custom mixture of moss, agar, and humic acid, urban residents can spray living greenery onto barren concrete walls, transforming oppressive cityscapes into microgreen habitats.
• Heat-Reactive Posters: Inspired by historic protest posters, these thermochromic prints reveal hidden messages when temperatures rise, drawing attention to the invisible reality of urban heat and inviting public participation.
• Community Data-Mapping Platform: Each greening intervention can be logged anonymously, creating a shared record of grassroots environmental actions and building collective visibility.

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