And while Pop Rocks, on the surface, is mainly about creating a creative, comfortable public space -- using only sustainable, re-used products -- the larger questions about economic class and politics loom large in the creators' minds.

In fact, they said, even after the City of Vancouver approved their proposal as part of its Viva program -- an Engineering Department effort "creatively transforming streets into vibrant public spaces," according to its website -- the city was concerned about the Pop Rocks being a little too comfy.

"Anytime you put something soft out in public, there's an issue with homeless people," Dahmen said. "Who is this really for? To me, it's actually exciting that different demographics will use it in different ways.

"Part of the struggle of trying to offer a place of respite, slow-down, soft landscape where people could experience the city and each other in a different way, was born out of a desire to address some of those same issues.... In a way, that's a radical notion of the project.... (Urban theorist) Mike Davis and others have pointed out the not-accidental adoption of measures to keep people from being too comfortable in public."

Slowing down the centre

In fact, when renowned Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson was hired to design Robson Square in the late 1970s, it was hoped that the new space would deter the mounting social protest movements of the era from gathering in large numbers, Dahmen said.

"We have a plaza that responded to the social organizations of the sixties -- and a reaction to protests that happened in public space," he explained. "In a certain sense, those concepts of preventing public unrest were operative in the design of this area.

"A highly capitalist city really wants to be about flows and vectors going from one place to another. If people just slowed down, sat down and had conversations, they might not be buying as frequently to put it in really simple terms."

Indeed, the city's concerns about Pop Rocks attracting street people looking for a quiet, soft place to lie down and some shade from the sun is precisely one of the social-inclusion questions most pressing for its designers.

"Everything has politics embedded in it," Frid-Jimenez says. "The city ... didn't want it to be so comfortable; they were worried about it attracting a homeless population.

"Slowly over time, we were able to have a dialogue about that, and say, 'Well, really, there are so few places where you can create an intimate space in the middle of the city -- where you can be outside in public, and yet it's soft and intimate' ... We used the environmental interest of the city to make that happen. We're very devoted to the green aspects of this project ... but that opened the door for us to then deal with other questions that are much more difficult, like providing comfort in the city in a public space."

And yet -- for Soules -- the chance to create a temporary work in a space designed by an architectural guru like Erickson (who, it turns out, was Soules' first employer after graduation) is also an enticing opportunity.

"It's really exciting that we've been able to do this project in one of Arthur's most important projects in his career," he says, resting his elbow onto the teflon-coated fibreglass surface of our Pop Rock. "It's humbling and exciting that we're able to do something in a place that our most important architect created.

"This installation aims to be radically inclusive. We did think about children and how the very young would be drawn to the mysterious shapes -- they could play on them... (But) you notice the forms are raised to varying heights -- we gave thought to how a very young person to an elderly person could still find a place to sit here. It was always our hope that this would be inviting to as large a group as possible."

You're being watched

When the project wraps up Sept. 3, an unseen aspect of Pop Rocks will begin -- 19 stories up in a neighbouring office tower, a low-resolution camera is creating a sort of graphic map of how people use Robson's 800-block, and whether that changed. Without any personal data involved, the blurry, colourful image produced by the camera will help designers learn about how we interact with our urban environment -- and each other.

With most spaces downtown made of hard stuff -- concrete, metal and glass -- the presence of soft, foamy towers in the heart of the city might help reassess how cities are designed, and how people might interact differently.

A small child scrambles over another Pop Rock across from us, as several others bounce atop the unusual mountain of foam and recycled sails, seemingly unaware that this is anything out of the ordinary.

"It's almost very primitive and very raw," Soules concludes. "I mean, it's just big bags filled with materials!

"It's so raw and immediate. I think that's one of the appeals, and why kids are so drawn to it.... These soft pillow forms are very unexpected in a city core. The recycled materials have this magical effect, to produce this other-worldly, dream-like landscape -- to radically transform the centre of the city and make it into a playful, delightful (thing). And, as you can see, it's working!"