This article looks at artistic interventions as impulses for urban innovation. It investigates their ability to create the conditions for new forms of engagement, influence, rethink or enable new kinds of cooperation or experimental ideas to approach the urban context. Two examples are examined, focusing on their production and the emergence of new roles at the intersections of disciplines or in processes of co-creation. The architects and designers involved in this process become “intermediate actors”. Their doing shifts from creating spaces to creating experiences and new public interfaces where city-making and social engagement is re-imagined, discussed and tested. The artistic interventions selected show new formats established in or at the intersection with public space. As catalysts for transformation processes they contribute to an urban and cultural knowledge creation and address a shift of focus in approaches towards an urban context.