HOOPcycle is a MesoAmerican + contemporary basketball court on wheels that transforms urban spaces into places of play and invites players to reinvent the rules of the game.
Created by artist Marisa Morán Jahn and architect Rafi Segal, this vibrant, public art project invites recreational equity and celebrates the game’s pre-Columbian cultural heritage.
The first HOOPcycle was produced in partnership with Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum in 2025 and continues to toodle around the great Windy City. The second HOOPcycle, produced in partnership with Corvetto Basket Academy, will premiere in 2026 at Milan Design Week (Salone) in partnership with The City of Milan.
Events
Premiere of HOOPcycle Milano at Salone (Milan Design Week)
April 19 (4-6:30 pm CET): Piazza Castello dalle Ore
April 23 (5-7:30 pm CET): Secret location
April 25 (10-12:30 pm CET): Corvetto, Piazzale Gabrio Rosa dalle Ore
Chicago Highlights
Aug 23-24, 2025: HOOPcycle Chicago makes a special guest appearance at Bulls Fest, the annual festival hosted by the NBA's Chicago Bulls.
Aug 15, 2025: HOOPcycle Chicago and Angel Reese’s Reebok Airstream team up at Wintrust Arena for WNBA’s game between Chicago Sky v. Golden Gate Valkyries!
May 10, 2025: HOOPcycle toodled over to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for a day of play.
HOOPcycle Chicago is regularly on view in the parking lot shared by The National Public Housing Museum and a new mixed-income housing development in Chicago’s Near West Side at 919 South Ada St, Chicago, IL!
The ball court at Chichen Itza, Yucatán, Mexico. Players gained points not by bouncing the ball but by using their knees, hips, and elbows to knock a hard rubber ball weighing 13 pounds into the vertical rim.
Bball’s Evolving Design
The game was referred to as Pok-A-Tok, Ulama, or simply the Ball Game.
Marking its home at National Public Housing Museum is OOPS, a geometric ground mural that celebrates street games and their role in bringing people together to play. In OOPS, colorful shapes are outlined in yellow traffic paint, the same paint that regulates how people move in the streets and parking lots. In OOPS, the linework transforms the parking lot into a space of play. The resulting artwork traces the regulations of the vehicular influences on the modern city. and the rules of MesoAmerican and contemporary b-ball.
The first women’s basket ball teams emerged within 2 years after basketball was reinvented in the United States in 1891. In Chicago, women at the Jane Addams Hull House were encouraged to participate in recreational sports and formed one of the nation’s first competitive teams, sharing facilities alongside 3 Hull-House men’s teams. Sewn from leather with uneven seams, the balls were not bounced but instead were passed into a hoop.
HOOPcycle’s design reinterprets the Meso-American tradition of papel picado (“perforated paper”) in which the holes — like portals —are said to let the past come through. Aside from the functional aspect of the holes (to let wind pass through and reduce weight), the ornamentation celebrates the game as an important form of cultural expression.
HOOPcycle’s Creators
As an artist of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn loves how the HOOPcycle celebrates hybridity and the dynamics of people and play over time. “I love how the HOOPcycle invites a really broad group of people to play — many of whom who might not otherwise step onto a basketball court.”
Marisa Morán Jahn and Rafi Segal are an artist-architect duo whose public art and civic structures engage people in tackling complex issues on a community scale.
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Marisa Morán Jahn is an artist of Ecuadorian/Chinese descent whose work “exemplifies the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum) and explores “civic spaces and the radical art of play” (Chicago Tribune). Working across drawing, public art, and architectural-urban scales, Jahn directly engages new immigrant families and low-wage workers — and millions more via Tribeca Film Festival, United Nations, Obama’s White House, The New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and international media (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Univision Global, BBC, CNN). Jahn is a Senior Researcher at MIT (her alma mater); Director of Integrated Design at Parsons/The New School. marisajahn.com | @marisa_jahn
Rafi Segal, architect and MIT professor, sees HOOPcycle as a way to rekindle urban street culture and civic engagement. “Suburbanization and disinvestment have fragmented our cities, contributing to a crisis of loneliness and loss of public gathering spaces,” says Segal. “By bringing play back to urban streets, HOOPcycle reclaims these spaces for connection.”
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Rafi Segal is an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at MIT. His work involves design and research on the architectural, urban and regional scale, currently focused on how emerging notions of collectivity can impact the design of buildings and cities. His current ongoing work includes designs for new communal neighborhoods in Israel, Boston, Rwanda, and the Philippines. Segal directs Future Urban Collectives, a new design-research lab at MIT that explores the relation between digital platforms and physical communities asking how architecture and urbanism can support and scale cohabitation, coproduction, and coexistence. Segal has exhibited his work at venues including Storefront for Art and Architecture; KunstWerk, Berlin; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Venice Biennale of Architecture; Museum of Modern Art; and the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Urbanism Biennale. He holds a PhD from Princeton University and a M.Sc and B.Arch from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
The HOOPcycle’s Community Stewards
The National Public Housing Museum is built on the former site of the Jane Addams Homes, Chicago’s first federal housing project. It is the first museum in the United States dedicated to telling the stories and sharing the history of public housing in this country.
Corvetto Basket Academy is a non-profit social and athletic organization providing recreational and leadership development opportunities for young people ages 8-14 in Milan’s Corvetto district. Located in a historically underserved neighborhood, Corvetto’s free and inclusive programs specifically target young people who face barriers to accessing traditional sports academies.
The HOOPcycle is made possible through support from the Joyce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Chicago Association of Realtors, The Faculty Fund at Parsons/The New School, and Dole Italia.
Team:
Chicago Communications: Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu
Chicago Fabrication: Art Domantay, Big Deal Cases
Design Assistance: Ous Abou Ras; Studio Assistance: Zevin Acuña, Em Flaire
Milano Fabrication: ilVespaio, Workbike G.S.
Milano Communications: OneLab Milano