Urban Play

Abstract

Scott's Email*AboutNews, updates and jet-lagged commentary on my work as creative director,strategist and writer working with design and urbanism as open platforms,and other topics that seemed like a good idea at the time.Featured ProjectUrban PlayProjectsA selected portfolio of my work and projects in recent years.Trust Design | AmsterdamOrigins of a typical laptop assembled in Shanghai, China. Map Designby Robin Uleman, based on sourcemap.org map created by Leonardo Bonanni.Origins of a laptop by Robin Uleman, based on sourcemap.org map byLeonardo Bonanni.Trust Design is a project I created and am directing for PremselaPlatform for Design and Fashion in Amsterdam. It is an explorationof how Transparency, Relevance, Understanding, Sustainability andTraceability have become essential design ingredients in our futurerelationship with design, and where open and local design culturesare explored for answers to global questions. For more informationon Trust Design, visit the project website at trustdesign.nl. ProjectDates: ongoing.Urban Play | Amsterdamstephan sagmeister Jens Rehr web ProjectsStefan Sagmeister's public design of 350,000 euro cent coins; photoby Jens Rehr.Urban Play is a project I created for the city of Amsterdam in collaborationwith Droog Design, which explores open approaches to design and creativityin the city.From September to December 2008, the IJ waterfront area of Amsterdamwas transformed into a creative playground where people could interact,alter and rework a series of design installations. To use a softwareanalogy, the designs were installed in version 1.0, and it was upto the public to develop them into version 2 through individual andcollective creative intervention.In its most simple terms, the concept I created was this: insteadof taking the usual approach towards urban design, in which objectsand areas are created to prevent alteration and intervention by thepublic, what if we created a series of urban design which invitedit? I worked with a team of 12 designers and architects from aroundthe world, including Stefan Sagmeister, Marti Guixe, NL Architects,Korea’s Nothing Design Group, India’s Gunjan Gupta, and Argentina’sDesigno-Patagonia, among others. The event was massively popularin Amsterdam and generated a vast amount of global media coverage.You can see more images from Urban Play here and read more about theproject here.