Cybercity Wakefield was Wakefield’s contribution to ‘The Third Eye’ a project devised by Graham & Christina Smith and Anja Bardey, connecting individual’s, institutions and groups from different areas in Europe in an artistic, technological, educational and cultural exchange. Participants were several schools in various cities of the Ruhr District in Germany; from Wakefield, Wakefield College, Hemsworth Arts and Community College, Wakefield Council, DLA Architecture and Beam; and projects from the Randstad District of The Netherlands. The project questioned, ‘What is a City?’, ‘What could a city be?’ and united pupils, students, artists and others in the creation of new model future cities based on the themes of Urbanism, Identity and Integration.

What did we do?

Cybercity Wakefield focused on what the future might hold for the Wakefield District. Initial workshops were delivered with local college students were they designed and produced a series of scale models depicting buildings and spaces in an imagined ‘future Wakefield’.  A series of workshops, events and seminars open to the public were delivered by Beam and DLA Architecture which considered the physical and the digital city and creatively explored questions such as ‘What does the future hold for Wakefield?’ and ‘How can we manage our sense of place and belonging in cyberspace?’ These discussions culminated in a model created by DLA Architecture to reflect a wider Wakefield response.

The Final Exhibition - Essen

All the models from participating countries were shipped to Essen in December 2010 and were installed on the premises of the heritage site ‘Zeche Zollverein’, creating a unique exhibition of ‘Cybercities’ which highlighted and represented the key issues which the participants felt were important to them in relation to the future of their cities. A virtual exhibition ran simultaneously at the Beam Gallery in Wakefield enabling visitors to use virtual platforms to steer robots around the ‘cybercities’ and providing a web booth through which visitors could interact with exhibition visitors in Essen. The exhibition offered a unique platform to exchange information about our home cities and our vision for the future.

Click here to see the Third Eye website.