- Systemic changes
We look at the city as if it were an under-designed playground. We aim to detect playful practices embedded in everyday life, that occur in spite of the dense, car-oriented structure of the city of Athens, and enhance them with new focal, linear and superficial interventions. We propose the schematic approach of a Play Syntax that welcomes and encourages loitering (Jane Jacobs), provides stimuli to citizens of all ages and shapes common spaces of inclusiveness and togetherness. Minimum changes, diffused in the urban space (urban acupuncture), can trigger a major shift in the ways we perceive, experience and appropriate the city individually as well as collectively. We aspire to design a series of objects, developed through participatory processes, in three levels: Traces (randomly initiated play), Events (organised play) and New Design (experimental prototypes).
First typology of Play Syntax: collecting ‘Traces’ of randomly initiated play by field research.
First typology of Play Syntax: collecting ‘Traces’ of randomly initiated play by field research.
Second typology of Play Syntax: creating ‘Events’ of organised play. Illustrated here is part of the painting ‘Children's Games’ (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Second typology of Play Syntax: creating ‘Events’ of organised play. Illustrated here is part of the painting ‘Children's Games’ (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Third typology of Play Syntax: introducing ‘New Design’ of focal, linear and superficial interventions.
