Slide one

CIVIC SPACE is an interactive art design collaborative. Marek Walczak & Wes Heiss have completed major public artworks in cities including Indio, CA, Denver, Co, Chico CA, Denver CO, Laramie WY, Wayne NE & others.

Slide Two

Our backgrounds in architecture combined with ‘in-house’ design & fabrication skills have enabled us to easily coordinate a wide range of resources.

Slide three

Our work uses a range of technologies, from hardware like laser-cut steel or bronze castings to custom interactive software, each carefully applied based on needs & challenges of each project.

Slide Four

We work by understanding the local history & community at each location, often with numerous workshops – creating silhouettes of the community, or by asking for kids’ drawings, or improv & other acting & language-based groups.

Slide Five

We’ve collaborated since 2007 & have completed commissions with budgets up to $1m.

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SHADOWALK

Derived from Indio’s history with date palms, this ¾ mile shade structure on Jackson St. joins the new CV Link to the new park. Local school children drew shadows of palms and we translated those drawings onto perforated shadow-casting panels. An undulating structure reflects the surrounding mountains.
Completion in 2024.

Story of the project so far

AAD Faculty Show

Wes Heiss’s exhibition at the Art, Architecture and Design Faculty Exhibition, showing models & mockups of Civic Space Llc projects.
January 28, 2025 – May 23, 2025

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A SENTIENT HEDGEROW

Hedgework is an urban landscape intervention that takes the form of a sentient hedgerow. It is a community of native plants and environmental sensors that create a biodiverse habitat that supports the butterflies, bees, birds and squirrels that inhabit it, while engaging the community members, workers, cyclists, pedestrians and others that surround it. But the essential and unique transformational relationship the Hedgerow creates is the real conversation between human and more-than-human stakeholders. Its infrastructure helps to generate a series of feedback loops that provide many opportunities for playful response and interaction. Hedgework seasonally transforms over the life-cycle of its installation, growing, generating data, building knowledge and writing a soundtrack that reflects the climate and disposition of the site.

about HEDGEWORK

MARKERS

Four pieces along a new one mile long park in the Clayton and Cole neighborhoods, Denver. Each sculpture figures a landmark or neighborhood event.

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THOUGHTBALLOONS

Working with the community to develop source material, the piece generates amusing & profound conversations relevant to the new Stapleton population.

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14TH STREET OVERLAY

Each instrument combines a real-time view of the streetscape with an ‘overlay’ slide that adds an additional narrative. We identified locations & stories that combine into a ‘treasure hunt’ of 23 somewhat hidden artworks.

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ANIMALS EYES

Animal sculptures are placed throughout the Berry Center, each highlight a specific Wyoming ecosystem.

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FACEWALL

Facewall is made up of 1000 profiles of community residents & students, faculty, staff at University of California, Chico. 79 vertical stainless steel ‘totems’ look out onto the city, quietly watching over the equally diverse group of people who will see it every day.

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STAPLEFIELD

A dynamic model that expresses the state of the building & its occupancy.
An array of sensors analyze movement in the various parts of the Center & respond through a living light choreography.

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STORYTIME

A large sculptural monolith that displays stories about time. A playful clock of sorts, the piece changes its content every minute.

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ABOUTFACE

AboutFace is a record of a time & place, a way to eulogize the present & look forward. The roundabout is a pivot into the college. On this roundabout we place a drum with profiles of people at the school – anyone who signs up can get their profile placed there – a welcoming committee to all.

More here ABOUTFACE

AGRIKULTURA

What is our present relationship to the land?
How can we engage with a nature we push ever further from our lives?
How can we effect our cultural & emotional connection to a nature that we have over-extended?

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SHAKER

The Shaker was our first sculpture that plays with anamorphosis, a type of distortion where the form resolves at only one point of view.

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