Making infrastructure interesting trough stories
This series of collectable cards tell stories along the tracks of the soon to be built tramway in Tampere, a city of approx 220 000 inhabitants in Southern Finland. Each card sheds light on the history, and the future of a specific area around the future tram stops.
The public discussion around big infrastructure projects often revolves around the costs and technicalities of a project, sometimes forgetting the big picture. How will this projected the change it brings take its place in the continuum of an ever developing city, its history, and the life of its people. Sometimes it's easier to crystallise the meaning of a project trough a less than common method.
The collectable cards give a tangible form to a huge, multifaceted project, allowing the city to communicate the meanings of the upcoming change in an interesting, approachable and humane way.
The task included developing several approaches to telling the story of the tramway to the public in an interesting and visually appealing way. As preliminary options, in addition to printed media, also methods of animation were studied as an option. From our three proposals in terms of method, the collactable cards were chosen due to their flexibility and the variety of approaches possbile within the method.
The cards were designed in collaboration with the group of experts working in the tramway project, allowing the expertise of these professionals in terms of the history, as well as future developments of the areas to be directly used in the cards, published in fall 2016.
