Are you ready to move to your next home in Haven stad ?
Nex-Haven | At the airport
Student project at Hogschool van Amsterdam
Client: ARCAM, Gemeente Amsterdam. Informaat
Timeline: 4 month
Tags: Interactive experience | Urban development | Social awareness
project brief: The industrial area near Sloterdijk, Westerpark, and Noorder IJ-plas will soon include up to 70,000 homes and 58,000 jobs. The city of Amsterdam and Arcam want to involve future residents in planning this urban space.
Our project aims to create a way for these future inhabitants to help envision a sustainable Haven Stad that meets their needs.
project roles:
Ideation
User research
pitching and presentation
Digital and physical prototyping and testing
The big problem
Future inhabitants (current citizens) find it hard to understand urban plans, making them less likely to form opinions. Without clear opinions, they cannot envision and discuss about their future lifestyle.
Also, HavenStad is going to make use of new and innovative energy sources, future inhabitants need to know about the energy transition and how to adopt their lifestyle with it.
Nex-Haven: At the airport
Future residents share one common need: they all must move to Haven Stad first. We compared this to airport check-in, but instead of packing belongings, they pack their habits, reflecting their future lifestyle. Participants used different sized and weighted blocks in a clear bag to represent their choices and the carbon footprint of those habits. (each habit has a certain weight based on the carbon it emits) They had to carry this weight with them, making their choices tangible. After selecting their habits, participants went to the check-in desk, where their lifestyle choices were recorded in a personalized passport, determining their access to Haven Stad. Our goal was for visitors to see each other's 'luggage' and spark conversations.
Check-in Screens
The packing
Here the visitors are presented with 8 different boxes with different sizes and weights. the weights are adjusted and scaled down based on the carbon footprint each habit leaves behind. The visitors have to try and choose between habits that they want to take with them to HavenStad in their transparent luggage.
The Conversation
Here is the stage we dedicated to a “designed conversation”. As we had hoped, visitors were curious about each other’s luggage and started talking about the “habits” they are taking to their next home in Haven-stad. we heard conversations like: “Oh! we’re both bringing our car!”. or “well, I coundn’t give up the meat either”.
our goal was to see if people are willing to let go of habits or decide to “share” here.
The Check-in
At this stage, we had designed a check-in station and we weighed the luggage just as it is done at the airport and we would compare it to the “sustainable amount of carbon budget” the each citizen is advised to produce on a yearly basis.
The take away
After visitors luggage has been weighed, and they were informed about the “destructive effects of their habit on the energy transition”, they were granted access to Haven Stad with a passport in their hands that carries stickers of their unsustainable habits. This is for visitors to both remember what they are taking away from this experience and also be reminded that they can always change to more sustainable habits.
