Prague’s Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP) celebrates its second season with an interactive city-game & exhibition: Imagine Prague / Pře(d)stav si Prahu. The exhibition encourages the citizens "step into the shoes of city planners to build the city of the future" as it is nicely stated by the organizers. And, the exhibition can be visited until the 20th December, open from Tue – Sun from 9 am to 9 pm. 

"Each of the four game stations operate independently of others,  however decisions made   while playing will influence the shaping of the whole."   

The interactive exhibition combines real-data information technologies and gaming elements with the visitors' imagination of how the city might function better in the future. Visitors are also able to try out different scenarios and compare the results of their decisions with the real data. In this way, the exhibition helps focus on the city's future development and provides the citizens with the Prague's Strategic Plan that is being implemented by the Prague Institute of Planning and Development (IPR) and determines the priorities for Prague’s physical, economic and social development to 2030.

Interaction is projected on the large screen through gaming tables and pulleys. Any intervention related to housing, economic development, transportation or public spaces can be made by the visitors, and the results immediately appear in color animation on a 25m-wide projection wall. The city-game is created by IPR in collaboration with Oficina graphics studio, which designed the animated simulation and gaming system using remote color sensors.

The curator of the exhibition is Petr Peřinka who joined IPR in 2015. Since then, he has involved in the institute's cultural planning and is responsible for completing the update of the Strategic Plan of the Capital City of Prague. And, since it is a game, there is a "winning" strategy: The curator asks visitors to think like real planners and decision-makers, and achieve the results as close as creating the future city that:

... prospers economically

... enables healthy and fast transport

... provides comfortable housing

... is alive!

The Exhibition Showcases How Games Can Help Improve City-Making & Implement Participatory Design Appraoch

Games have started being widely used by urban planners, city experts, architects and social impact designers to explore alternatives in city-making strategies. The potential of games in urban planning and city-design are obviously immerse due to the fact that the players are urged to imagine reshaping urban governance, decision-making, alternative forms of engaging in the city that might be otherwise not possible. Applying gaming method into urban planning and architecture also creates a sense of inclusion and civic engagement so that players are able to grasp how their decisions can infleunce the future of the city. 

Thus, the interactive exhibiton aims to help the visitors better understand the basic principles of Prague Strategic Plan which consists of thousand of pages and very difficult to understand even by the city experts explained by Štěpán Bártl, the program director at CAMP. 

All images courtesy of CAMP

> via CAMP