koji hellman (they/he)
providence, ri / seattle, wa
risd graphic design 2027





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Pedestrian Bridge Puzzle (2025)



This is a double-sided puzzle about the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge in Providence, Rhode Island, made in collaboration with Reina Wang and Alisha Zhou. One side tells you how the people of Providence currently feel about the bridge, and the other details statistics and history related to the bridge’s construction and materiality.


This project was done for Unit 10 of our Design Studio III class, focused on answering this question: “How can we explore and expand the tools of data visualization to communicate the characteristics, and stories, of a place?”. In groups, we were instructed to choose a site around Providence and synthesize a project that reflects its unique histories and relationships through the act of data collection and research. 

Our group (Me, Reina Wang, and Alisha Zhou) chose the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Providence that had a controversial history related to the high cost of its construction, but has now become an integral part of Providence’s landscape. 

Awesome view of the Providence skyline from the bridge -> 



We quickly realized we wanted to something related to the contentious history of the bridge, and were interested in how people were thinking about it. We launched a widespread, trilingual (English, Spanish, and Chinese) poster campaign asking people to express their feelings about the bridge in a simple Google form. We received around ~60 submissions over the course of 2 weeks.

Since this project is so based in community, we knew from the start the output had to have a lot of interactivity. We decided to create a puzzle due to how straight-forward the concept was (most people know how to do a puzzle!). We also pushed for as large a size as possible to encourage groups of people to work together to complete it.






Original sketch for the project. 



I was responsible for illustrating both sides of the puzzle, and assembling/painting all of the puzzle pieces. The blue side is the “opinions” side, with each piece containing one anonymous entry from our poster campaign. The orange is the “statistics” side, where each piece contains one fact about the construction and history of the bridge. 

The final product comes in a box with 54 5x5” puzzle pieces and a manual with information about Michael S. Van Leesten, and a legend to help players discern where each piece goes. 











©2025koji maria hellman@eepykeepy