The System in the Room: Play as a Tool for Exploring the Concept of Urban Systematisation
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The System in the Room is an art installation inspired by mathematician Mihai Botez and architect Mariana Celac’s book The Systems of Spatial Planning, published in 1980 in Romania. Developed and presented in the context of the Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies (2019-2020) project, the art installation reinterprets Botez and Celac’s ideas on housing in a contemporary context using playful and participatory methods. It aims to allow the players to experience and reflect on the housing concepts advanced in the book.
The practice of urban planning has changed dramatically since the book was published. Still, it fascinates by its attempt to define urban systematisation as a science that deals with the organisation and complex remodelling of territorial structures and cities to ensure the optimal framework necessary for the development of human activities and the mutual relationship between the environment and its inhabitants. It is one of the first of its sort to address systemic thinking and, in the context of a socialist country, the book points to the role of science (mathematics in particular) in the planning and management of urbanism and economy.
By performing and representing housing concepts, we sought to bring back a historical perspective, its resurgence into today’s urban studies debates and the role of citizens and urbanists in today’s political decisions regarding the city.
By using games and participatory methods we aimed to critically discuss a specialist book in urban studies and to encourage more engaging perspectives in today’s urban planning decision-making contexts. At the intersection of urban studies, cultural studies, STS, game design and artistic research, this paper takes an urban planning book and its contemporary context as a starting point and discusses an original art installation as a form of critical reading and participatory engagement in the urban planning decision-making process.
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Maria Mandea, National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale”; Super Serios Collective
Maria Mandea (b.1991, Bucharest) is a playful media artist and designer who works within social contexts. Considering viewers as players and collaborators in her artwork, she challenges disciplinary and role boundaries. With a background in object design and, before that, in algorithm thinking, she creates objects that contain sets of rules for imagined situations in which players can become immersed. Her work consists of large-scale gamified experiences. Her work’s recurring themes are togetherness, reaching a common aesthetic decision within groups and the post-industrial, post-socialist context in which she lives.
She graduated from the Product Design department at the University of Architecture and Urban Planning in Bucharest in 2017 and defended her Doctorate in 2022 at the University of Arts Bucharest with a thesis on Play Design.
In 2013 she created Micul Haos, a toy design project based on an original concept on the border between toys and participatory art objects. In 2017, she co-founded Super Serios Collective, where she develops games and playful-performative installations. In 2021, she co-founded Știrbei47, an art space for emergent and participatory art in Bucharest. She currently teaches Game Design and Analogue Game Prototyping at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest.
Teodora Ungureanu, Super Serios Collective; NIRD URBAN-INCERC
Teodora Ungureanu is an architect and researcher in urban studies. She will soon defend her PhD thesis on urban regulations in Romanian mass-neighbourhoods at The Doctoral School of Urban Planning with the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Planning in Bucharest. In 2017, with Maria Mandea, she founded Super Serios Collective, a play design studio based in Bucharest where they work on urban game experiences that promote participation and collaboration. With a background in architecture, Teodora currently works as a researcher on urban studies at The National Institute for Research and Development URBAN-INCERC.
Anca Badut
Anca Badut is an Architect, CG generalist and writer. She explores transdisciplinary research and design in order to address complex challenges at the intersection between architecture and computer graphics. Blending together the dynamism of architecture, the impact of art and the power of visual communication that computer graphics offer, her experiments are at the intersection between the rigid and organic, the static and dynamic. Over recent years, she has created designs for the underwater world, experiences inside “living” sculptures and community-oriented architectural designs to enhance liveability in urban environments.
Tincuta Heinzel, Loughborough University
Tincuta Heinzel is an artist, designer, researcher and curator and a, Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University in the UK. A recipient of a Fulbright Grant at Cornell University and of an IMERA Fellowship in Marseille, France, she is interested in the relationship between arts, design and technosciences with a special focus on electronic and reactive textiles and wearable technologies. Under what she labels as the “aesthetics of imperceptibility”, she investigates the aesthetic issues of nano-materiality and electro-magnetism in textiles, as well as the implications related to the digitalisation and the cybernatisation of the industry and society. She has initiated, curated and/or coordinated several projects, such as “Artists in Industry” (Bucharest, 2011-2013), “Haptosonics” (Oslo, 2013), “Repertories of (in)discreetness” (Budapest / Bucharest, 2013-2015), “Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies” (Cluj / Timisoara, 2019-2020) or and the Textile Intersections Conference (2019). Her texts have been published in journals such as Design Issues and Artnodes.
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