Playful Design for Smart Cities

Ear­li­er this week I escaped the mis­er­able weath­er and food of the Nether­lands to spend a cou­ple of days in Barcelona, where I attend­ed the ‘Play­ful Design for Smart Cities’ work­shop at RMIT Europe.

I helped Jus­si Holopainen run a work­shop in which par­tic­i­pants from indus­try, gov­ern­ment and acad­e­mia togeth­er defined projects aimed at fur­ther explor­ing this idea of play­ful design with­in the con­text of smart cities, with­out falling into the trap of solu­tion­ism.

Before the work­shop I pre­sent­ed a sum­ma­ry of my chap­ter in The Game­ful World, along with some of my cur­rent think­ing on it. There were also great talks by Judith Ack­er­mann, Flo­ri­an ‘Floyd’ Müller, and Gilly Kar­jevsky and Sebas­t­ian Quack.

Below are the slides for my talk and links to all the arti­cles, books and exam­ples I explic­it­ly and implic­it­ly ref­er­enced throughout.

• Carve. Play Land­scape Be-Mine. 
• L. David Thomas. Fun House: Ludus Loci and the Amer­i­can Home as Folly.
• Con­stant Nieuwen­huys. New Babylon.
• Cedric Price. Fun Palace.
• Ron Her­ron / Archi­gram. Walk­ing City.
• Stef­fen P. Walz. Toward A Ludic Archi­tec­ture: The Space of Play and Games.
• James C. Scott. See­ing Like a State: How Cer­tain Schemes to Improve the Human Con­di­tion Have Failed.
• Jane Jacobs. The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities. 
• Nas­sim Nicholas Taleb. Antifrag­ile: Things That Gain From Disorder.
• Stew­art Brand. How Build­ings Learn: What Hap­pens After They’re Built.
• Dan Hill. Dark Mat­ter and Tro­jan Hors­es: A Strate­gic Design Vocabulary.
• Venkatesh Rao. Break­ing Smart.
• Poké­mon Go.
• Skate­board­ing.
• Park­our.
• Dérive.
• Erik Burke and Lynn Maha­ras. Pieces of Berlin.
• Jane McGo­ni­gal and Ian Bogost. Cru­el 2 B Kind.
• Graf­fi­ti Research Lab. L.A.S.E.R. Tag.
• Cul­ture jamming.
• Street art.
• James Rojas. Place It!
• Irwan Ahmett and Tita Sali­na. Mono­rail Slalom.
• Supertree Grove.
• Buck­min­ster Fuller. “Call Me Trim Tab.”
• The Fun The­o­ry. Piano Staircase.
• Fear­gus O’Sul­li­van. The Prob­lem With ‘Playable’ Cities.
• Hub­bub. Camparc.
• Hub­bub. Standing.
• Hub­bub. Play­ful Devices Improv.
• DUS Archi­tects. 3D Print Canal House.
• Foun­da­tion Projects. Straatlokaal.
• Pelle Brage / Per­fume. The Har­bor Laboratory.
• Gods­ba­nen.
• Hub­bub. New Plan­ning Methods.