Urban Play as a ‘Social Interstice’: On a Micro-intervention Involving a Mobile Game Device

Abstract

In the image of an urbanised world that is more and more elusive, public space can hardly today be reduced to a defined and permanent typology. Between the evanescence of the new electronic agoras and the enduring settings of traditional urban plazas, a form of public space that is at once nomadic, dynamic and circumstantial can virtually infiltrate itself everywhere. This constantly evolving public space would hypothetically constitute a fluctuating and interstitial constellation that could activate the existing urban framework. In this perspective, play is a promising tactic to reactivate the urban ‘living together’ at a microscale.

In the context of the research programme ‘Temporary Urban Interstices’ carried out by Constantin Petcou and a team of other researchers, the urban exploration workshop SYN- develops, in the La Chapelle neighbourhood in Paris, an intervention that addresses at a small scale the notions of public space and ‘living together’ in the city. The intervention is simple: to set in motion a nomadic and playful device – a mobile football table – as a vector of circumstantial and relational micro-activations. This device proves to be a remarkable catalyst for social interactions.