When Ego Becomes (W)ego

(W)ego, a life-size installation, allows visitors to interact, aspiring to reconstruct a participative dream, a living mosaic that contains an unlimited amount of desired accommodation solutions in a dense urban environment

Dutch Design Week ambassador Winy Maas curates with The Why Factory (W)ego: The Future City is Flexible. The installation will be open to the public every day at Markt Square, Eindhoven between 21-29 October 2017.

In this installation, nine rooms are made to fulfil these idealistic but egoistic perspectives in a limited space. When confronted with the dreams of others, users must learn to negotiate with each other. How to defend your ideals? Users start to work with and around each other and, somehow, together create something that is even nicer. And with the surrounding intrusions and negotiations, one begins to feel that something interesting is happening "next door." Why not visit your neighbour? Thus, Ego becomes Wego.

The future city is flexible. Have you ever dreamed of sleeping suspended high in the air? How would it feel to sleep inside a vertical hanging garden? What if your room was made of stairs? Would you dare to sleep in a room that was a billboard? Or inside a shimmering grotto? What is your dream room? “Based on the hypothesis that the maximum density could be equal to the maximum of desires, this research conducted by the Why Factory explores the potentials of negotiation in dense context,” says Winy Maas. “Through gaming and other tools, Wego explores participatory design processes to model the competing desires and egos of each resident in the fairest possible way.”

The (W)ego installation represents a frozen moment in the living and flexible (W)ego vision. In (W)ego a research platform from The Why Factory, future urban dwellings are capable of adapting in real time to the users' needs. This vision is detailed in a film that plays in one of the rooms of (W)ego.

Dutch Design Week takes place between 21 - 29 October.

Tags: