Award 2016

2016 Playable City Award goes to Hirsch and Mann

The winner of the 2016 international Playable City Award was London based design and technology consultancy Hirsch & Mann, who pitched to transform everyday pedestrian crossings into playful multi-sensory experiences.

In September 2016, Watershed unveiled the shortlist of 8 projects out of 81 applications from 34 countries for the fourth international Playable City Award, inviting artists, designers, architects, technologists and creative practitioners from all over the world to propose new and distinctive ideas to respond to the theme Journeys.

Hirsch & Mann’s Stop Smile Stroll is a playful intervention at pedestrian crossings that brings strangers together for a serendipitous shared moment – interrupting the tedium of our everyday mundane ‘stop and walk’ routine. The judges were particularly excited about their emphasis on co-creating pedestrian crossing experiences with local communities – which may range from a 30 second party to a moment of quiet reflection, as well as incorporating city data.

As winners of the 2016 Award they received £30,000 and worked with the Watershed team to develop and test their ideas in Bristol, before touring to other Playable City cities globally.

Stop Smile stroll will be live in Bristol on 17 and 18 March as part of the 5G Layered Realities Festival.

The 2016 Playable City Award is produced by Watershed and supported by:

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Shortlisted Projects

Winner

Stop, Smile, Stroll

“Stop, Smile, Stroll” will transform a pedestrian crossing into a 30-second game.

Shortlist

Dance Step City

Giving passersby license to dance their way down the street, turning a few steps from an ordinary walk into a playful and magical journey.

Shortlist

Happy Place

Happy Place reinterprets signposts as experiences to move visitors and locals both physically and emotionally across the city.

Shortlist

Im[press]ion

Im[press]ion blurs the boundary between the digital and the physical in its romantic venture to make tangible an otherwise inept digital interaction.

Shortlist

Make Your Rhythm

Make Your Rhythm gives passengers the opportunity of having fun while they are waiting for the bus.

Shortlist

Mischievous Footprints

Mischievous Footprints invites citizens to play as they travel through the city by giving their footprints the power to roam freely.

Shortlist

Paths

A public space musical instrument and light installation celebrating the journey of cyclists traversing the urban environment.

Shortlist

The Conversing Circuit

The Conversing Circuit is about creating a conversation between a person and the environment around them.

Award Judges

Phil Bates

Phil is Head of Oracle’s Cloud development team in Bristol UK, building cloud lifecycle infrastructure and functionality that manages the development and delivery of Oracle’s IaaS and PaaS products and technologies.

https://www.oracle.com/uk/index.html

Claire Doherty

Claire Doherty is the founder Director of Situations, producers of extraordinary artworks and projects in unexpected locations across the world.

http://www.situations.org.uk

Peter Madden

Peter Madden OBE is Chief Executive of Future Cities Catapult.

http://futurecities.catapult.org.uk

Mark Leaver

Mark is Development Director of Playable City.

https://twitter.com/mark_leaver
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/markleaver

Clare Reddington

Clare joined Watershed in 2004 and as Creative Director leads the Pervasive Media Studio, Playable City, engagement and cinema teams, working with industry, academic and creative partners from around the world to support talent and champion new ideas.

https://twitter.com/clarered
http://www.watershed.co.uk

Stephen Hilton

Stephen Hilton is passionate about using digital technology to create a society that is creative, smart, green, connected, open and inclusive.

Previous Awards

Award 2015

Winner

Urbanimals

A playful pack of wild beasts appeared in unexpected places across the city of Bristol, waiting for people to play with them.

Shortlist

Lighting Conductor

Lighting Conductor allows Bristolians to conduct their very own city light orchestra through the movement of their bodies. (UK)

Shortlist

Puffin Jam

In selected pedestrian crossings in the city, push-button units are replaced with similar looking boxes that, in addition to the existing controls and displays, also… [Read More]

Shortlist

Supernatural

Supernatural re-wires and re-wilds the city, giving magical properties to natural materials in historical locations. Wood, water and soil act as musical instruments, when you… [Read More]

Shortlist

Take a Seat

Take a Seat encourages strangers to meet and interact over a familiar piece of urban furniture. We see benches as inert objects every day. We… [Read More]

Shortlist

Whispering Clouds

Two fluffy clouds hang over the city – lighting up and displaying people’s messages and encouraging people to play and connect. Hanging over the streets,… [Read More]

Shortlist

Why sit when you can play

“Why sit when you can play” reimagines public benches to create a platform for people to come together through music, light, and fun. Marimba like… [Read More]

Award 2014

Winner

Shadowing

Shadowing gives memory to city street lights, enabling them to record and play back the shadows of those who pass underneath.

Shortlist

Beneath our feet, the stars

You’re walking over a bridge at night and to your right, down below on the water, a huge word in white light is forming. Then… [Read More]

Shortlist

CitySelfie

CitySelfie asks citizens to take a snapshot of Bristol using different technologies to slice through different layers of the city.

Shortlist

Pipe Dream

Pipe Dream is an interactive musical sculpture built from actual piping. It reimagines cities’ most utilitarian and intimidating elements as exuberant and inviting opportunities for interaction.

Shortlist

Press Play / Toca Aí

Inviting people to come together and make music by pressing trigger points around the city.

Shortlist

Shark in the Puddle

Shark in the Puddle is a collection of freely-distributed interventions in the city. Ludic Rooms, the creators, will collaborate with the people of Bristol to create an arsenal of open ‘disposable’ artworks that gradually inhabit the city, changing daily based upon the ecosystem: sun, rain, wind, day, night.

Shortlist

Transportals

Transportals will transform a series of locations across Bristol into pockets of interactive audio-visual art that will invite Bristolians to re-experience their daily environment as one of joy and play.

Shortlist

VVTC

Subverting surveillance technology, VVTC puts the public in control of playful security cameras across the city.

Award 2013

Winner

Hello Lamp Post

Hello Lamp Post invites people to strike up conversations with familiar street furniture using the text message function of their mobile phones.

Shortlist

Cast

CAST is an ambitious, site-specific, city-centre pavilion, where the form of the structure’s cladding is created from 3D scans of items provided by the public, each of which will represent their own personal relationship with the city.

Shortlist

Interactive Album

Interactive, collaborative, existing simultaneously online and in the real world, this album is a hybrid between light installation, musical performance and generative interface.

Shortlist

Playscape

Playscape is a network of lightweight, robust digital screens situated around Bristol, acting as a source of many different types of interaction with the city. The… [Read More]

Shortlist

Robot Runners

Robot runners is a game that you play in the real world while your robot clone traces out your path nearby. It combines electronics, geo-location technology and human interaction to create a truly original fun and engaging game.

Shortlist

Sing a Little Song

Sing a Little Song will bring a new form of birdsong to the city, guided and controlled by online interactions.

Shortlist

The Arc Project

The Arc Project accumulates, conserves, and offers the experience, of physical forms in the virtual world, creating the city’s augmented reality museum of life.

Shortlist

The Balloon-ometer

The Balloonometer asks the people of the city to remember their playfulness.

Shortlist

The City you Dreamed of

Tumbling out of the back of a re-appropriated tip-up truck will come huge building blocks, all colours and shapes. An open invitation to play, build your dream city, knock it down, and then build it again.

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2016 Playable City Award goes to Hirsch and Mann

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Award 2015

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Award 2014

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Award 2013

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