Playful City
How to stimulate healthy living in cities in a playful way?
Year of project: 2018
Commissioned by: Living Lab Utrecht
Partners: Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat - Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit - Provincie Utrecht - City of Utrecht - Springlab
Beurskwartier Utrecht
About Playful City
The Beurskwartier in Utrecht is a new neighbourhood to be built in 2023. Its primary focus is to be an example of a smart and healthy district. Therefore, Living Lab Utrecht challenged me and my partner to design three creative concepts to stimulate healthy living in a playful way with special attention to mobility and physical activity.
Together with future residents, architects, urban planners, behavioral scientists and other creatives, we presented three concepts: Playroute (cheap, simple and lowtech), Positive Sound (medium expensive and challenging) and Up Utrecht (dreaming big and bold).
Playroute
An active and playful route through the neighbourhood consisting of ten events, similar to the decathlon. Examples of the events include a trampoline path, a bouldering wall and mini-games with light panels. It would take a total of approximately 30 minutes to complete the whole Playroute.
Positive Sound
Research shows that environmental noise in vibrant cities can cause stress to its habitants. Think about the constant flow of cars, trains, buses and the sirens of police and ambulances. Positive Sound aims to add a new, positive and pleasant sound to the public space, which drowns out the negative sounds.
Up Utrecht
Cities only take up three percent of the earth's surface, yet more than half of the world's population lives in these cities. Needless to say that cities are becoming increasingly crowded. That is.. on ground level. Why don’t we make use of the sky more often? Up Utrecht envisions a vibrant city on sky level, starting with walking routes between buildings.
Living Lab Utrecht eventually decided to invest in Positive Sound for further development. Due to lack of time, I decided to reject this follow-up assignment. The Living Lab then chose HKU X as their development partner, you can read about their progress and research on this website.
