SPILLET OM TROMSØ

THE GAME OF TROMSØ 1995 - 97
”If anybody can show me the future, then I really want to see it.”
(Statement by a member of the Tromso City Council that in 1995 approved The Game of Tromsø as a method of urban exploration.)

The main rule of the game entailed selecting places and endow them with new meaning. Accepted views about a number of urban spaces were turned upside-down in an extensive dialogue between the various forces at work in the urban field. The explorations served to challenge existing views on landscapes, forms of development, complexity, the programme of the city and the emerging urban geography.

The Game gave access to and visualised daring excavations in the city of the future by means of exhibitions and texts produced during two highly intensive years. Inward growth became the city’s main strategy, a new model of understanding was established.

The Game of Tromsø became a part of the national strategy of the Ministry of the Environment and received the Norwegian Prize for housing development and urban planning in 2004. The jury stated that:

”The Game of Tromsø has rendered dynamic the process of urban planning. It has lifted itself from the frames of convention, structured and extracted urban space in a novel manner that has both challenged and expanded the democratic processual repertoire of planning legislation.”

Read more on The Game of Tromsø at Northerngateway