CITY OF EXPERIENCES

Opening Reception: 
Design Exchange lobby
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
7-9pm

Exhibition Run:
Design Exchange Lobby
Dec. 18, 2018 – Feb. 22, 2019

As we move through the 21st century, the experience of life in the contemporary city has surpassed classic urban development models. We are living in the 50/50 (some might say 80/20), a fluid presence between the virtual and physical worlds. One of the major issues we face is how to adapt and interpret ideologies, structures, and systems in this new way of living, to modify the definition of cities to encompass the experiences of the invisible cities that extend beyond physical infrastructure. As the digital landscape evolves, humans have more opportunities to intersect with physical and digital realms as they navigate the city and its experiences, creating a series of micro-interactions that occur across and throughout urban spaces. 

Imagine a city without buildings—a city designed around experiences.

The underlying goal for the City of Experiences project is to continue questioning how cities are constructed and who they are constructed for. The popular discussion around the smart city and tech-utopias is not new, although maybe the technology used to drive them is. What is needed now, is to stop waiting for the acceleration of technology to determine how we will live. Instead, we should be active in creating the necessary platforms for society to imagine what experiences they want in their lives, and how these experiences can drive new methods for design. The City of Experiences is a project that through different experiments and engagements will continue to explore this hypothesis.

This exhibition showcases work by students and faculty from the School of Design at George Brown College. Through a series of workshops and experiments, they have reframed how cities are designed.