Cico City; urban innovation game

Everyone is an architect

Cico.city is a mixed reality game in which players collaborate to build an environmentally sustainable eco-city.

The game is designed to be played for fun or for real. The pieces of the game are open source design components from the Archetectonic Archive (aka WikiHouse). The game can be played with pen, paper and found objects by a group on site (in a rural setting), at a conference with video projection, or with VR or AR headsets. It can be played solo, or in real time with a group of participants. It is in effect a conceived as a game.

Why a game?

Cico.city has a dual purpose. It is designed to be used to introduce to a wider public to the principles. At Stockholm+50 we aim to launch Cico.city as a public engagement that anyone around the world can get involved in. We aim to use this game to crowd source open architectural design elements and award prizes to the best designs.

The game is designed to be played locally in relation to a praticular site, or abstractly in relation to a virtual location. At Stockholm+50 we wish to engage the audience at the conference and participants from around the world in the design of a future eco city in which participants are asked to submit ideas, and eventually detailed designs that can be used in the construction of real buildings, processes and urban plans.

The game is inspired by earlier work on the Building Utopia project, and you can get some insight into the proposed design from thhe following video.

This project was from 2015, and has progtressed considerably. We now have built a cryptoeconomic challenge platform based on open innovation principles, that is able to run the archetectural design competition and multi-stakehholder engagement and there has also been considerable improvement in terms of the mixed reality game technology that allows us to build visualisations of the design elements.

However we aim to maintain lements of the facilitated (charette based) workshops in the game design, and the Performance Builds that enable us to bring human centred desing principles into the process. This lowers up-front development costs as we can include performative elements into the game play prior to designing software mediated game elements.

NFTs, decentralisation and open source designs

The game uses fractional NFTs to protect and enable investment in creative assets such as WikiHouse templates, Smart BIM, and Smart Contracting elements. The built in IP protection is utilised within the game to protect and incentivise designs, while ensuring that they are published as open access, open data and open source code.

Game Participants: locations

We propose inviting actual locations seeking to build environmentally sustainable developments, eco-villages and eco-cities to participate in the project. We have currenlty two developments that have expressed an inteerest - Alto Paraiso in Brazil a relativley small development of an eco-reserve in Brazil and a large development of an eco-city in Thailand. We have access to a database of intentional communities and eco-villages arond the world, and aim to seek to reach out to locations interested in participating in the Cico.city design challenge.

Game Participants: players

Anyone can play Cico.city. It is an innovation game where the gameplay involves forming groups, proposing ideas, researching them and then building them. You can assemble your own spaces, buildings, or cities, and seek inhabitants. The more inhabitants you have the more likely your city is to thrive. If the components you need do not exist, then you are free to design them using free open source design tools, and if you need specialist skills to help you do this, you can use the value your project accrues to commission other people to help you build the new component.

Annual Build

Each year the best structures are built and shown off to the world. Some ral, some virtual and we judge and award prizes to the best structures.

Cico.city DAO

The Cico Cito game is organised on the platofrm as a DAO, and encorporated in law as a not for profit with the aims of creating open source sustainable designs for a better planet. The rules of the game are built into how the legal entity works.

Details and Timeline

The details of the platform and funding opportunities are for now confidential, and form part of the game. We invite you to play. Starting January 28th, 2022