There is something quietly radical about a public artwork designed, from the ground up, to remain unfinished. A Hatthe new installation by Brooklyn-based studio The Urban Conga does just that – not as a fleeting conceptual gesture, but as a structural commitment built into every design choice.
Located in the Jacksonville Riverfront Music Garden along the St. Johns, next to the Jacksonville Symphony, A Hat it occupies a musical note carved into the landscape. Drawing from a collection of 84 songs by more than 60 local artists spanning the 1920s to the 2020s, the premise is deceptively simple: Jacksonville’s musical heritage is not a static archive to be preserved behind glass, but an open conversation that any passer-by can expand upon.
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
A Cappella by The Urban Conga © Christopher Brickman
Cappella Installation by The Urban Conga:
A symphony mapped onto the landscape
The installation is organized into four sections that reflect the movements of a symphony – motivation, home, love and freedom – each dictated by its own rhythm, emotional register and atmosphere. Evolution is intentional. Visitors traversing the space sequence experience the work as a graded experience rather than a static exhibition, where energy and forward momentum gradually give way to contemplation, intimacy and ultimately a broad emotional resolution. It is a natural landscape entirely shaped by musical logic.
What sets the project apart is that its core material came directly from the community. Through an extensive public engagement process, Jacksonville residents identified the songs and lyrics that most accurately reflected the character of the city across genres, generations and neighborhoods. This distinction matters: the resulting collection is not a curatorial choice imposed from outside, but a collective portrait assembled by the people it represents.
The Urban Conga he then deconstructed these selected verses into single words and short phrases, inviting visitors to rearrange and recombine them into entirely new compositions. The interactive mechanism allows anyone to slip a modern rap line through a Prohibition-era verse or remix a 1940s blues verse with a rock song from the last decade. This act of recombination is the whole point. It highlights unexpected thematic connections over time, revealing how ideas of home, freedom, and belonging have resonated in Jacksonville for a century without ever congealing into a single, definitive narrative.
An ever-changing light and color score
Bichromatic and reflective panels define the visual language of the piece, changing color, light and shadow as the day progresses and visitors move through the site. The panels act as both surface and atmosphere, ensuring that each visit is formally different from the last – a fitting choice for a project that argues that cultural expression is inherently fluid, recombined and alive.
Built-in seating areas encourage gathering and conversation throughout, while a central circular bench serves as the facility’s communal anchor. By adapting the relationship between the four symphonic movements and the layout of the artwork, the bench turns the act of understanding the piece into a shared, social experience rather than a solitary reading of a plaque.
critical, A Hat it is made to grow. Its modular framework is designed to accommodate new artists as Jacksonville’s musical history continues to evolve, positioning the facility as an open score for future voices to rewrite. This is perhaps the work’s most rigorous claim: that the most honest form of cultural memory is that which leaves itself unfinished by design.
Designing participation through play
Behind the project is The Urban Conga, an award-winning multidisciplinary design studio led by Ryan Swanson and Maeghann Coleman, AIA, NOMA. Work at its intersection architectureurban design, public art and social practice, the studio has built its practice around a core belief: that play, applied as a serious methodological tool – both in the final project and throughout the community-led design process – can transform overlooked spaces into vital platforms for collective exchange, curiosity and lifelong learning. A Hat is one of the clearest expressions of this vision to date.
