City Details Exhibition

The design of the City: Details exhibition held last October at VDNKh (the Exhibition of Economic Achievements expocenter) is the result of joint work done by a team of designers and a team of our employees who work on the implementation of the My District program launched by the Mayor and the Government of Moscow. Our team initiated this idea and outlined the main directions for its implementation. The main aim of the My District program is to create equalized development conditions for each and every district of the capital. That is, Moscow residents no longer have to go to the city center in search of entertainment or in order to deal with some personal matters. Now everything they need has to be located in the neighborhood – be it a modern health care facility, children's and sports grounds, recreation areas or a beautiful amusement park. This global idea is the cornerstone of our concept that became a response to modern trends in the development of urban environment. These very trends are currently changing the image of various districts and cities, and Moscow is no exception. The interactive exhibition space with an area of 15,000 square meters represented a city divided into the zones that are already familiar to Muscovites: a major attraction of a district, an amphitheater, a night city installation, a square for playing board games, a sports ground, children's playgrounds, a street, and a food court.

Above all things, we wanted the city prototype that we created for the exhibition to be beautiful, modern and comfortable to live in. That is why we put special emphasis on the aesthetic side of the project and gave through consideration to all essential details. Today, it is impossible to imagine any kind of urban environment without modern technologies. We paid special attention to this aspect. The visitors encountered a large multi-screen art object right by the entrance to the exhibition. That interactive art installation was made up of two 9-meter-high stelae and ten touch control tables. The entire visible surface of the stelae was covered with led screens. A visitor would select a Moscow district they were interested in on the control screen. Following that, a video about this very district would appear on a stela facet. Note that the visitors could not only create a visual image of an art object in real time, but also determine the associative array of Moscow districts (sports, culture, transport, leisure) that got displayed on touch panels in the form of statistic data, also in real time. One could simply tap on the screen to select and watch 5 short but very interesting videos (specially created for the exhibition) about the evolution of familiar items: benches, playgrounds, street lights and public transport stops.

Besides, each and every visitor to the exhibition had an opportunity to vote and determine the best exhibit in each category (sports grounds, playgrounds, etc.). To vote, one simply had to scan the participant's QR code that had been generated during the registration. Visitors also had a chance to vote by using the touch panels installed at the venue.

Most notably, it was the desire to show how beautiful, friendly and secure a modern city and its districts can be. And we are able to create such a city or district by joining our efforts, we can do it with our own hands. Parks, squares, playgrounds and sports areas – all these objects form the environment we are used to. However, if we work on and perfect this environment, we will be able to significantly improve the quality of life of all categories of citizens – both adults and children, young mothers and elderly people, teenagers and the rising generation. Districts with comfortable living environment and equal opportunities for all – I guess, this is the main idea of our concept.