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News and jet-lagged commentary on creative strategies, concepts and solutions for design, urban and creative economy opportunities worldwide.
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View Scott Burnham's CV: Geographic Version in a larger mapFeatured Project
Urban Play
Urban Play is a project I created for the city of Amsterdam in 2008 in collaboration with Droog Design and presented as part of ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam 2008, which explored open approaches to design and creativity in the city. Here’s a selection of what took place, with more information on the project below.
Urban Play is a project in two parts: the exhibition and the design route.
The Exhibition
The Urban Play exhibition provided a global overview of urban design interventions done outside of the formal channels of institutions, commissions and urban planning in cities around the world. Some refer to it as guerrilla design or “3D Graffiti”, but this surge of urban creativity – from billboards that are visually remixed, to streetscapes which are morphed into theatrical areas in the middle of the night – is where creative expression in the city becomes physical, literally transforming cities around the world.
The Urban Play Exhibition
Featuring an unparalleled collection of work from 18 of the world’s most talented urban interventionists curated by me, the exhibition explored how this latest wave of interaction with the urban landscape is challenging the rules of engagement between citizens and sanctioned urban creative expression – moreover, how it is changing the language of creativity in the city.
Traffic Go Round by Mark Jenkins
While some social attitudes have previously dismissed urban intervention as a form of vandalism, at the heart of this current wave of DIY urban design is in fact a deeply sophisticated movement driven by artists and designers who want to expand our relationship between creativity and the city. Done without permission or commissions, the vast range of work on display represents the intersection of the latest genre of street art and the beginnings of open source urban design.
The Route
Droog Design and I assembled a team of some of the most innovative designers and architects from around the world to create 12 newly designed interventions, tools, toys and objects that are temporarily placed along a route on the central IJ-riverfront in Amsterdam. Reversing the traditional approach to urban design, in which objects and areas are created explicitly to discourage public interaction and intervention, this collection of objects were created to encourage interaction and physical engagement by the public. Urban Play poses the question that we hear so much about the “creative city”, but when to we actually get to see it in action?
Sculpt Me Point by Marti Guixe
Inhabitants and visitors who come across the installed elements of Urban Play along the route are challenged to bring the objects to their next level. Sometimes, however, this ‘next level’ can have unexpected consequences. Few realised that Stefan Sagmeister’s spectacular design of 350,000 euro cent coins:
Would meet its demise at the hands of the Amsterdam Police…
Sagmeister photos by Jens Rehr
You can read the full story here.
Urban Play Credits
Concept Creator and Curator Scott Burnham / Participants – Exhibition Arno Piroud [FR], CutUp Collective [GB], Gilberto Esparza [MX], Graffiti Research Lab [US], Jason Eppink [US], Ji Lee [KR], Joshua Allen Harris [US], Mark Jenkins [US], Leon Reid IV [US], Office for Subversive Architecture [GB, DE, AT], Posterchild [CA], Rebar [US], Roadsworth [CA], SpY [ES], TheGreenEyl [DE], Truthtag (Krystian Truth Czaplicki) [PL]; Till Bay (Windowzoo) [DE], You are Beautiful [US] / Participants – Route Designo Patagonia [AR], Gunjan Gupta [IN), Jan Konings [NL], Ji Lee [KR], Kwangho Lee [KR], Martí Guixé [ES], Martin Ruiz Azua [ES], NL Architects [NL], Nothing Design Group [KR], Office for Subversive Architecture [GB, DE, AT], Rebar [US], Sagmeister Inc. [US] / Exhibition and Communication Design Thonik / Production Maaika Gottschal / Production Assistant Joep Pingen, Laura Schon
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