MorphoPoly

Research Presentation

Building, research and learning games on the question of the city model

How can we plan, design and inhabit urban existence differently – and for multiple living species and life forms? What is a model and how can we understand models differently and understand other models?
MorphoPoly is a process-oriented project in the field of artistic research. Several groups create city models and other designs from diverse materials and in diverse media for a performative, multi-sensory conception of contemporary urban existence. These designs evolve in the context of a ‘gamification’ that is itself part of the process.
At various locations in Vienna, the team of morphoPoly organized building, research and learning games on the question of the city model.
Which models we can design for the urban upheavals that are already underway? What is a model, what can a model do, how can we understand models differently and understand other models?
How can we plan, design and inhabit urban existence differently – and for multiple living species and life forms?

MorphoPoly has, during its first period (2021–2023), undergone a complex process involving the planning and monitoring of building (and dissolving) model cities using various materials, ranging from Lego and toy bricks to everyday leftovers.
The initial builders were children aged 6 till 12, with some of them collaborating with us throughout the entire process. The project evolved within fluid structures, bridging the realms of Social Design and Zentrum Fokus Forschung. It combined the animating, almost therapeutic qualities of hands-on building and tinkering with transdisciplinary, multi-sensory research on our perception of cities, encompassing not only utopian but also real urban environments.
One branch of the project was dedicated to creating a board game meant to demonstrate the ecological challenges inherent in contemporary and immediate future city planning. Participants were instructed to transform the over-crowded cities of the 20th century with streets planned for car traffic into an urban development fit for the 21st century.
All those models and model games building on each other, but also wildly diverse and built in different venues, from the UNIDO and the Austrian Filmmuseum to the Poolbar Festival in Feldkirch, ask for a narrative bridge that was provided by an on-going project of (often hilarious) story telling.

At this event, we aim to present the project using audio-visual materials, which are the only lasting remnants of many long-dissolved cities, and the necessary hooks for the narrative. Additionally, we can exhibit objects and designs created by children (and others) that have the potential to endure the permanent dissolution process. Those designs will be offered to those interested in preserving them. The objects come with narratives of bold imagination, spanning from fanciful prison systems to luxurious swimming pools.
Thus the story telling arc of the project can go on in each household that will host a piece of morphoPoly.