This weekend marks the first of many new ventures in my once, and soon to be again, home city of Boston. I have been invited by Boston University to design and host a workshop for BU students which explores creative urban responses to some of the challenges facing the city of Boston. You can find the website for the workshop here, or read on for more information.

The workshop is being run as part of my work with concepts to “reprogram the city”: working with the existing urban objects, spaces and infrastructure to create new functionality out of existing urban assets.

The BU Lab is an opportunity to generate multi-dimensional ideas for Boston’s future challenges, solutions, and opportunities. BU Lab will be a R&D department for the city, utilizing a cross section of disciplines within BU – from Engineering to Law; Biology to Fine Arts – creating a framework of ideas and applications for the city. The diversity of these disciplines is fundamental in creating holistic, sustainable solutions to the city, and Boston University is uniquely placed in having such a rich pool of resources to bring together.

The initial “test bed” for the BU Lab will be the Commonwealth Avenue corridor, defined by the MBTA route running from Kenmore Square to Agganis Arena. This corridor provides a rare sampling of almost all urban elements that need to be addressed with future urban thinking: public transportation, traffic, pedestrian areas, retail interfaces, shared space, green space, bridges and essential infrastructure.

BU Lab can also function as a means of creating tactile environments for some of the larger issues facing Boston and cities at large. T platforms (Boston’s subway is known as “the T”) and shelters could be test models for everything from rain water collection systems to energy production sources and sustainable shelter design. The student population and transportation corridor provide quantifiable and predictable metrics of use and population statistics which are highly valuable and can be used for everything from specific testing opportunities to opportunities for arts students to create visual or narrative journeys for these populations along the corridor.

The first BU Lab workshop will serve as an insight into a new way of approaching the city – using a mosaic of skills, interests and insights to develop robust, sustainable ideas for urban issues.

It’s going to be a wonderful experience to return to Boston for this, and promises to be an inspiring time ahead, for the workshop, myself, and Boston. Watch this space.

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My starting point was something I’ve long been obsessed with – desire paths. Desire paths are the footpaths created by the public when the formal paved routes of a space don’t represent the most efficient, or desired, route between points A and B for the public, and they chose their own paths, their desired paths, as shown above. I wanted to find a way to capture the desired movement of people in a public space and use this incidental movement as a tool to enable a sense of contribution, connection and ownership between individuals and the shared spaces of the city.

Working with designer Jon Stam (centre, above) and programmer and Studio MSP guru Mattijs Kneppers (far left), we identified a space in the NDSM area of Amsterdam and set out to create a system to transform it into a platform for aesthetic narratives created by the movement of the public.

The beauty of only having a couple days to create a prototype for a project is that you instantly shift to hacking and rapid prototyping mode. So we grabbed a Kinect, some cables, a few blocks of Styrofoam, booked some time on a CNC machine, and went at it to communicate our idea. The full narrative outlining the concept and the playback system we devised for the space during night time follows. For those who want the quick walk-through of the concept, our summary presentation can be found at the bottom of this post; for an even quicker bite, here’s a video of us demoing it:

Concept Overview
We hacked the Kinect to serve as a prototype of a public camera overlooking the space, layering it with the ability to pick up a single object or colour on a visitor when they enter the space, and then remember that object and track it as it, and the person, moves through the space. If visitors to the space want to remain anonymous, they simply enter the space and walk through. If someone wants to take ownership of their movement in the space, they touch in at one of the check points with an RFID tag on their key fob, and they are given a unique colour path, which which they can draw something in the space, and then download an image of what they’ve drawn with their movement if they wish.

As the visitor walks across the space, his path leaves a trail in the grid of LED lights are embedded in the surface of the space. The next visitor to enter the space will see the trail left by the previous visitor, and other recent ones as the ghost of their travels are held by the LED lights in the pavement, each previous path fading slowly with time. The space holds a living history of its use throughout the day, and becomes a canvas for those who have ID’d themselves when they entered the space.

Night Time Use
The space holds the memory of its use at night. When dusk falls, a playback of the daily travels through the space begins, each path glowing and traffic patters growing as the timeline of the space’s use from the previous day is played back over night, as this video shows:

Through this playback of the day’s movement in the space, a relationship builds between those who use the space during the day and those who use it at night. The brightness and density of the light paths in the space at night will depend upon the traffic patterns in the space during the day – the more traffic during the day, the brighter the space will be at night. Ultimately, the normally ephemeral qualities of safety and security in the space at night become factors created and influenced by its use during the day.

For those who use the space both during the day and at night, the relationship between the two realities will form. Perhaps a few co-workers will be gathered to create some crazy shapes in the space during the day for them to enjoy as they come home that night. Or paths will be formed in circles to see if pedestrians at night will follow.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, every night, the design of the space will be different, directly correlating to the use of the space during the day, its animations, patterns and luminosity being the creation of those using the space 12 hours earlier.

Platform for Play
People are not the only thing able to be tracked in the space. Someone can place a ball on the square to be ID’d, and it will be tracked as well as it moves throughout the space. Children can enter from different entrances and invent a game where their movement become games pieces on a large urban board.

The space no longer becomes a passive area for its population, but an active participant in their daily lives, enabling creativity, connection, safety and narrative to be built during its daily use.

Platform for Data
In addition to the personal and narrative relationships enabled by use of the space, the space will generate data for use by the city. Data created by the space will be visual use patterns; data of the visual flow and use of the space.

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“Bairro Criativo” launched in Porto, Portugal on 24 May, the latest of my City As Platform projects which approach the urban landscape as a creative platform. I’m pleased to say that Porto has responded in style.

The agency ADDICT, lead by creative industries maestro Michael DaCosta Babb, asked me to create and direct a project exploring the question “how creative can Portugal be?”. The result is Bairro Criativo (Creative Quarter). Bairro Criativo combines the question they wanted to ask with one that I always like to ask:

We hear so much about ‘The Creative City’, but when do we get to see it?

For Porto, Bairro Criativo is that chance.

The framework for the project is quite simple. I put out the call through ADDICT’s communication channels to invite anyone in the city – designers, homemakers, business people, kids with crayons – anyone – to think of one thing they’d like to do to temporarily improve people’s daily lives in Porto. The only criteria was that the proposed ideas had to be simple, quick, and go in and come out with only a light touch on the city – nothing destroyed before they are installed, and no damage when they leave.

Of paramount importance to me was that this was an opportunity for a direct relationship between creative ideas and the physical city. No months of planning, no public workshops with post-it notes – let me know your ideas, let’s talk about how they’ll work within the framework of the project, and let’s make them happen. There are times when the long game is appropriate, and there are times when you just need to make the ideas happen.

It was interesting that a lot of people instinctively thought in what you could say were modular ideas – creating objects and opportunities to plug into the existing city to create new experiences, opportunities, and at times even temporary infrastructure. It was wonderful to see people think in modular, incremental terms – there was a pragmatic quality to the ideas at the same time as a fresh imagination which I enjoyed.

For a preview of a couple ideas I’m particularly excited about seeing happen…

"Farmville for Real" by Rita Maia, José Ricardo Cardoso, Pedro Cruz Lopes

Farmville for Real is a collection of modular structures made of two interlocking pieces. These small strucutres can exist on their own or in a group to enable pop-up community gardens anywhere, depending on the desire of the residents. The objectives of the project, say the creators are to:

• Provide people with an inexpensive opportunity to participate collectively in a project of common good.
• Promote shared responsibility in public spaces.
• Renew the urban landscape, making it more pleasant and healthy.
• Teach children and young people to start early to enhance the environment.
• Create an alternative way of spending free time.
• Create neighborly ties among the participants of the project.

Estrutura Simbiotica by Dioga Aguiar and Teresa Otto

Another piece, Estrutura Simbiotica by Dioga Aguiar and Teresa Otto is a modular construction that, as they say, “aims not only to increase the space of existing bus stops, but also to entertain those who are still waiting for their transportation.” I like it for both the visual qualities, but also for its symbiotic relationship with the bus stop (as the name would imply), and for its role in getting us to think of other areas and objects of the cities that could host a designed structure that plugs in to existing objects to increase both functionality and enjoyment.

Bairro Criativo article, Time Out Porto (click for full image)

More information on the project can be found on ADDICT’s website (in Portuguese).

For Portuguese readers, you can find an overview of the project in the current issue of Time Out Porto – scanned above.

If you’d like to keep track of future updates to Bairro Criativo or other projects, please subscribe to this site.

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UPDATE: The Urban Guide for Alternate Use is now live! http://www.altuseguide.com

I was recently asked by Die Fabrikanten in Linz, Austria for ideas for their upcoming Exchange Radical Moments Europe-Wide Festival. The result is The Urban Guide for Alternate Use – an open source city-specific ‘field guide’ for alternate uses for existing urban infrastructure.
It was a wide brief, but as I’m far more interested in exploring hacks and re-use of the existing urban infrastructure than air-lifting new creations into a space, I wanted to create a platform for exchange of ideas for alternate urban solutions based on existing structures and systems. The Urban Guide for Alternate Use is meant to be a platform for urban hacks, interventions, innovation and play with and in the city’s objects and areas. Projects such as Nina Mrsnik’s Open Chairs (pictured below) perfectly capture what the Guide is about – most people see a drab cement corner. Nina sees a chair.

Open Chairs by Nina Mrsnik

As the folks at the Exchange Radical Moments Festival explain in the festival catalogue:

Resourcefulness has become one of the most important skills for people to develop today. What resources do you see being treated as waste in your city that could be used to benefit others? The Urban Guide for Alternate Use is a catalogue of city-specific opportunities for resourcefulness  within existing urban environments, compiled simply by asking the city’s residents to devise alternate uses for things already present in the city. It is a guide that acts as a catalyst for a new form of resourcefulness in the city, and as a communicative vehicle for exchange among residents.

For the festival Exchange Radical Moments, a guide will be created for one of the participating cities, filled with the ideas submitted by the city’s residents, as gestures of donation to their fellow citizens. The city guide will be written by the imagination and resourceful thinking of its residents,  and can serve as an alternate guide to the city.  Together the different submissions will form a powerful collection of insights into how people mentally and physically play with the urban landscape  as a conglomeration of readymade objects ripe for intervention.

From hacks such as using traffic bollards as ladders to gain a better view of a football training session (top image), to re-imagining Amsterdam street sweepers as bird baths between shifts (as seen below), the Urban Guide for Alternate Use is an open platform for people to explore and re-imagine the uses of their existing city’s objects and areas. It’s early days, so release date, call for contributions, etc., still to come, but thought I’d share one of many things to come in 2010. Stay tuned.

Improvised Amsterdam Bird Bath

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I’m pleased to share the news that the latest book to feature my work and approach towards urban creativity has just been launched in Italy. The book, Disegnare le città (Drawing cities), is an overview of a more organic and people-driven approach to design, creativity and the city rather than the top-down model that has been dominant for so long. As the introduction to the book states:

Drawing cities today cannot simply mean creating (or re-designing) an emblem for public administrations. As the populations’ needs change and diversify, so do the competences and the ways they are represented and communicated. Therefore we now can observe, alongside traditional elements, the more or less aggressive affirmation of new instruments requiring attention, specific cultural standards and creative sensibility.

In it you will find text and commentary from myself, images from some of my projects, and a number of superb contributions from others. More information can be found here.

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Until I can find the time for some quality updates, you can take a look at my flickr photos of the preparations here.

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At the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris today as part of the final jury for the architectural design class being taught by my friends Karsten Huneck and Bernd Truempler of Office for Subversive Architecture fame.

As with most student work, there was a healthy range of ideas and varying degrees of talent on offer, but overall it was an fairly impressive selection of new thinking towards architecture by the next gen (well, France’s next gen). One piece that really stuck with me as I was walking around after the day was a project by students Berenice Gaussuin and Clair Tournier.

With a brief to redevelop an old firestation, they presented some impressively polished and well-thought out plans to gut the interior of the firestation and create an organically developing natural space within the building. Their ideas and execution of the project as they presented it reminded me of a lot of the thinking done in the second part of the Shrinking Cities project and even more radical explorations in terms of designing for shrinkage instead of growth in cities. Some nice work coming out of the ESA, guided by OSA. All hail the power of the acronym!

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Previously, on scottburnham.com…

As I wrote last week, I was an instructor for UQAM’s (University of Quebec in Montreal) Design International Masterclass. My workshop functioned as an creative urban laboratory to explore the objects and areas of the city with a new approach to design and the city: how can shared spaces, objects, visuals and aesthetics be created which invite creative participation by the public?

To say I was pleased with the outcome would be an understatement. For a more visual overview and a play-by-play in French, with a cameo by some of Montreal’s city officials who wanted to get inside the concept a bit more, go here.

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It’s been an inspiring week working with a team of about 40 advanced design students to explore the notion of urban intervention as a design process. The mission was simple: “The city as source material and canvas.” And with each day that passes, I’m continually impressed with the work coming out of the class. That, and the fact that the “Intervention Unit” van (above) is parked around the corner from the building. Coincidence?

Participating in these intense international workshops are always great fun – mostly because the students had to apply to get in, so they’re at their best, and also because the other guest lecturers from across the departments are all key players in their fields, so there’s also a great a vibe in the cafe in-between lectures, swapping ideas and contacts.

Come back soon for the flickr pool of resulting student work. You won’t be disappointed.

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Image Credit: Mark Jenkins

With Milan just around the corner, Droog and I have been putting together a few communication documents for Amsterdam’s 2008 International Design Biennale – Experimenta Design (EXD08), of which Urban Play will be the main event. Doing this, I realised the majority of public attention right now is on the new designs being created for the project. These are staggering, believe me. But in parallel to the design work is the work that’s being put into the Urban Play exhibition. So as a taster, here’s the PR info that’s going to be released about the show in Milan:

Urban Play: The Exhibition
international unauthorized collaborations and urban interventions

The Urban Play exhibition will provide a global overview of urban design interventions done by the public, for the public. While some refer to the latest wave of urban creativity as guerrilla design, and others term it “3D Graffiti”, the common definition is that this work is where creative expression in the city streets becomes physical and is literally transforming cities around the world. Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents, as the title states, unauthorised collaborations which exist at the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design. The Urban Play exhibition will show how this latest wave of urban intervention is not only challenging the rules of engagement between people and allowed creative expression in the city, but is also changing the language of creativity in the city. While social attitudes have previously dismissed urban intervention as a form of vandalism, at the heart of the current wave of guerrilla design is in fact a deeply sophisticated movement with a dedicated attitude concerning their role in the life of the city. The Urban Play exhibition is the definitive overview of the next wave of street art and the creative urban interventions that are literally transforming cities around the world.

The Urban Play project is conceived and curated by Scott Burnham and produced by Droog Design. For both the exhibition and the design commissions which create the Amsterdam route the renowned Dutch design studio Thonik (www.thonik.nl) will provide the design of the interface and interactive media campaign.

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