I am now obsessed with installations and making spaces and things to effect people in some environment. My group that I started FISHBOWL has let me get these things done. Our first installation was a battle with the school to rip back an old cafe that was just being used for storage. So we had some arguments with everybody, and eventually got some sort of control over it. 
So we painted the horrible red and blue walls a ridiculous lime green that has become related to our group as a starter, added new light fixtures, and would then implement our new environment into the room. The actual space would be shaped by an object to be built in the room which consisted of multiple ribbons that could oscillate up and down parallel to each other to create seats, tables, walls, and all sorts of other pieces that we needed to make the space what we wanted. It would be from wall to wall and sort of fit in like carpet filling the space and creating our space while at the same time not being attached to anything because one of the stipulations was that we could not do anything permanent (sucks). It would be made up of plywood strips braced with 2x4s to make them sturdy. Along with the insert and the painted walls was going to consist of large format stencil murals on the walls, and a series of these amazing ornate frames we found in a dumpster full of student work and the like. The result would be a spot for everyone to hang out in, and to have pin ups and reviews in the space making it good for everyone, and bringing in a little modern love to the otherwise overly shit brick college campus feel.
So we ran into a brick wall when the interim dean found out that we had sanded, primed, and painted these horrible orange wood veneer island pieces in the middle of the room. He claimed they were expensive Italian veneer, even though they looked like shit and were all sorts of worn down. He made us stop everything and believe it or not, sand all the shit off the island pieces taking the paint off to reveal the original veneer even more crap like due to the paint and everything. So this took us a hell of a long time and made us all beyond pissed because we had been spending all our time to improve the space, and the up and ups were shitting on our parade.
Then we were forbidden from doing anything else to the space. No murals, frames, and definitely no insert so we had to reorganize. We were decidedly against just giving up, and there was a big speech the next day from one of our school donors in the courtyard, so we made our stand. We built an exact replica of the insert that was supposed to be put in the room out in the courtyard where they had set up for the speech. We waited until everyone was gone at night, and then went to work. We frantically attacked the structure like guerilla architects. We had spraipainted our FSHBWL logo on it and also the words SHOP CAFE NO. 2 as well as 1:1 SCALE MODEL on it to really get our point across. Luckily enough, right as the sun was rising and we saw the first professor approaching we finished up and took all our tools with us fleeing the scene.
So we go home, take showers, and come back for studio and the speech to precede it. As we show back up, we come upon the donor giving his speech from on top of our object. Sweet revenge. As he finished up, we headed to the front to explain to him what he was standing on and he absolutely loved it. Our dean walked up, and said that this was a great example of what architecture students should be doing, right in front of the man who put the kibosh on our plans the night before.
That night, we threw a party on the object much to everyone's great enjoyment and enjoyed watching people using the thing the exact way that we had planned. There is something about watching people use what you design that just cannot be felt any other way. The thing stayed there all semester and although we never got permission to put it in the cafe, it was used by people every day and made the courtyard into a better space that we could have seen. I was well on my way to influencing people's spaces.
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