Cities of Things

Wrapped-up lists populate the email inbox and apps; this is not such a list, but let’s have a look at the 2024 activities of Cities of Things. In the next post we will look forward to 2025 and the theme for the new year.

We worked on the WijkbotKit in several forms, applying it in workshops, student assignments, and Tomasz Jaskiewicz and Iskander Smit published a chapter for the book of the Network of Applied Design Research: Between Experiments; Leveraging Prototypes to Trigger, Articulate, and Share Informal Knowledge, that was officially presented at Dutch Design Week 2024.

The year kick-off with the round-up of the Cities of Things LAB010 project at the 10 year Wijkcooperatie celebrative event. Wijkbot was presented and opened the freshly opened ResourceStation.

Workshop at conference PublicSpaces on 6 June, with an exhibition of the results on 7 June. See post on Wijkbot website.

Workshop at Society 5.0 Festival on 10 October, with a new iteration of the WijkbotKit. See post at Wijkbot-website.

Wijkcooperatie Afrikaanderwijk took the WijkbotKit to organize two workshops, one with kids. and one Woonstad employees. The results from the kids where part of the parade on 16 October at the open day.

We received a funding for extending the Wijkbot toolkit the Ecosystem of Systemic Co-design.

Iskander presented Generative Things at CleverFranke, the theme that was chosen for TH/NGS 2024 and is linked to the Cities of Things theme.

At RoboDam, we pitched the WijkbotKit for robot makers in Rotterdam. And we presented the Wijkbot at EASST-4s conference: “Infrastructuring public engagement with near-future technologies through prototyping kits – the case of a “wijkbot kit”

At Dutch Design Week we organized a Salon, and I did two workshops on Generative Things at The Hague UAS master Next Level Engineering and Avans UAS Health by Design. In the TU Delft minor Interactive Environments Wijkbots were used as part of a “Robot casting performance”

Next to these workshops within student programs we commissioned assignments for Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences IPO and CMD, The Hague UAS master Next Level Engineering. In the TU Delft minor Interactive Technology Design, four teams worked on neighborhood navigators.

Lisa Laverman completed here graduation project at Industrial Design TU Delft, a project that we commissioned together with Springtime. “Bottom-up intelligence: Exploring the role of agents for mobility orchestration in Negen Straatjes, Amsterdam“

Wrapped up

To wrap it in numbers; in 2024 we worked with

🎤 10 public presentations
🪚 8 workshops with about 100 participants
🎓 14 student projects with about 55 students involved
📚 3 new research papers
🤖 about 20 new wijkbots

Happy 2025!

As part of the special edition of TH/NGS 2024 – Generative Things, an exhibition and design contest was commissioned to invite the design of “provotypes” of future generative things. The exhibition kicked off at the conference in Volkshotel Amsterdam on 13 December, and has an online version too: https://thingscon.notion.site/exhibition-generative-things

Cities of Things contributed in developing the theme.

On 14 November, the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative organised a programme in the neighbourhood for Woonstad employees. The day ended actively with a Wijkbot workshop.

The workshop introduced employees to city robots, but was primarily an activity to connect staff with each other and close the day on an energetic note. In three teams, they each built their own Wijkbot.

The workshop was facilitated by Alejandra from the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative and Iskander from Cities of Things.

The Wijkbot was back at Dutch Design Week — this time as part of the Network of Applied Design Research gathering at Natlab on Tuesday morning, and throughout the rest of the week as part of the Stadslab Eindhoven exhibition.

The NADR gathering focused on the ESCall project of the Expertise Centre for Systemic Co-design, where network partners developed knowledge products for specific elements of systemic design. The Wijkbot was included as one of those knowledge products.

At Stadslab Eindhoven, an exhibition was set up featuring different forms of makerspaces.

On 16 October, Wijkcoop Afrikaanderwijk organised an open day. One highlight was a Wijkbot parade featuring four neighborhood robots made by schoolchildren.

The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative used the WijkbotKit to help primary school children build Wijkbots constructed entirely from wind-blown litter and leftover materials from the market.

During the open day, Alejandra Huerta from Wijkcoop introduced the robots together with one of the children. The robots then walked in the parade from Gemaal op Zuid to the Grondstoffenstation.

On 10 October we organised a workshop at the Society 5.0 Festival at The Social Hub Amsterdam, applying a new workshop format.

At the festival, Smit hosted a workshop titled Transforming the Neighborhood Fabric with Hoodbots, exploring how technology can be designed to blend digital and physical realities in ways that empower communities.

Because the workshop was relatively short (75 minutes), we focused more on the underlying goals and issues while keeping prototyping more limited.

On 26 June, four teams of industrial design students at TU Delft presented their prototypes for so-called Neighborhood Navigators as part of the course Interactive Technology Design.

Cities of Things was a partner in the course, inviting students to think about what it would mean if robots became a permanent part of the neighbourhood and played a role in civic life dynamics.

Students were challenged to design Neighbourhood Navigators — autonomous robots intended to enhance community life by performing daily tasks and fostering social relationships within urban environments.

On 6 & 7 June, the PublicSpaces conference took place in Amsterdam. Wijkbot was invited to run a workshop making the role of robots in the city tangible, with special attention to public values.

We opened with a short presentation about the project background and offered scenarios showing ways the Wijkbot can fulfil a social and public role reflecting the values of residents.

Inspired by Asimov’s three laws of robotics, we formulated three rules as inspiration for human-respecting robots.

The two teams built on this with their own interpretation: robots that combine social functions.