Shivangi Sinha
In the early 2000s, a group of eight artists secretly lived inside the Providence Place Mall in Providence, Rhode Island, by occupying an unused space hidden from public view. Their covert residence became a powerful statement on urban development, consumer culture, and the use of public versus private space. Netflix’s ‘Secret Mall Apartment’ documents this unusual chapter through interviews with all eight artists involved. One of them, Adriana Valdez Young, reflects on what the experience meant to her personally by describing it as both an artistic experiment and a search for belonging and creative freedom.
Adriana Valdez Young Lived in the Providence Mall Along With Her Husband
In 2003, Adriana Valdez Young was married to artist Michael Townsend during a period when rapid gentrification in Providence was pushing many artists out of affordable spaces. The construction of the Providence Place Mall became a symbol of that shift, replacing creative communities with commercial development. Adriana recalled being struck by an advertisement in which a woman said she would love to live in a mall because it would make life easier, a moment that sparked her own reflections on capitalism and consumer culture.
Those ideas fed into the group’s decision to secretly live inside the mall, where they gradually built their hidden apartment as part of a collective effort. Alongside her husband, she became one of the core group members to help their resistance and art demonstration take shape. At the time, Adriana was not studying art full-time and described the experience as a playful escape from the more serious academic research she had been immersed in. What began as something lighthearted eventually grew into a defining project and became a part of a much larger conversation about art, space, and identity in her life.
Adriana Valdez Young is Chairing a Department at the School of Visual Arts Today
Adriana Valdez Young is a design researcher, educator, and public-interest practitioner whose work spans urban design, social justice, and human-centered technology. Her professional journey began in Providence, Rhode Island, where she co-founded and served as Executive Director of English for Action from 1999 to 2005, a nonprofit dedicated to providing English-language education and support to undocumented immigrant families. During this period, she developed a deep commitment to community-led systems, education access, and immigrant empowerment. Academically, Adriana earned a BA in History from Brown University, graduating magna cum laude with a concentration in Modern Latin American History and Slavic Studies.
She later completed a master’s degree in Development Economics and International Development at The New School, before earning an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, where she graduated with distinction and received the Best Dissertation Award. Her research focused on informal economies, street-level innovation, and responsive urban planning, with fieldwork across India, China, and the Middle East. Between 2008 and 2014, Adriana worked as a researcher and program manager with institutions including the Urban Design Research Institute in Mumbai, LSE Cities in London, and the Community Systems Foundation in New York. During this time, she also studied politics near Moscow during Vladimir Putin’s first election and worked in a women’s prison in upstate New York, co-designing summer programs for incarcerated mothers and their children.
From 2014 to 2021, Adriana served as an Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design, teaching design research in the Master’s in Strategic Design and Management program. She later held senior leadership and research roles across innovation and design organizations, including Head of Research and Insights and Head of People & Culture at littleBits, Head of Cities at Stae, Urban Design Strategist and Lead at Openbox, and Head of Community at 3×3, where she supported inclusive innovation projects spanning New York to New Delhi. Since 2020, Adriana has been involved in graduate design education at the School of Visual Arts.
She joined as faculty, teaching research methods, ethics, leadership, and professional practice, before becoming Director of Programs, Acting Chair, and, as of March 2025, Chair of the MFA Interaction Design program. Her work centers on nurturing inclusive design cultures and advancing equitable, accessible technology practices. In parallel, she serves as a Senior Advisor at SOUR and, since April 2025, as a Board Member at Superbloom (formerly Simply Secure), an organization operating at the intersection of digital design and human rights. Adriana continues to draw from her lived experiences to inform her research on privatized public space and resistance through design.
Adriana Valdez Young Has Been Widely Celebrated in Her Line of Work
Adriana Valdez now lives in the Bronx with her son, and “mother” is one of the first words she uses to describe herself. She is also a devoted dog lover, sharing her home with both real pets and an endearing collection of stuffed dogs. From snippets she has shared publicly, it appears she lives with a partner who works as a software developer. Adriana maintains her own Substack, where her voice comes through and she is often described as a thoughtful and intentional artist who values clarity and purpose over spectacle.
Over the years, her work has earned significant recognition. In 2005, she received Brown University’s Young Alumni Service Award for founding English for Action, a school for immigrant families that uses language education as a tool for empowerment and civic engagement. In 2008, she was named an India China Institute Fellow through the Ford Foundation, supporting her research and travel across Indian cities to study emerging consumer lifestyles while teaching participatory planning and design. Her academic work was further honored in 2012 when she received the Hobhouse Memorial Prize from the London School of Economics for the best overall dissertation across MSc sociology programs. In 2013, she was also named a Design Case Winner by the World Bank Group for the Inclusive Planning Design Competition in Pisco, Peru.
She has always been someone who challenges herself and her work is a reflection of that commitment. While Adriana prefers to keep much of her personal life private, she has spoken in interviews about her relationship with art, her motivations as a researcher and educator, and the decision to live secretly inside the Providence Place Mall. She has reflected on how that experience shaped her thinking around capitalism and how it continues to inform her work today.
