Brief | Invisible Territories – Identifiable Territories
Project Leader | Luca Buttafava
Project Assistant | Konrad Bobrzecki
Group Members | Han Gwe Ahn, Peter Andersson, Yun Hye Choi

Idea | Problem Setting | Context
During the expo 2015 Milan will have a huge amount of tourists coming. These will not only visit the expo itself but also explore the city. Finding interesting information about the rich history of Milan is difficult and most people only visit the most famous places. This leads to some over crowded areas and a lot of ‘dead’ places. The city can feel very closed with all the walls, fences and bars which can make the environment feel unwelcoming. It is also hard to find a place to rest for a while.

What Is It?
City city bang bang consist of two parts. The first is a seat and the second is a system of talking arrows which can tell people about the city. Both of them can easily be put all around the city since they use objects already on the street as support. The seat uses the steel bars on the sidewalks that are suppose to stop cars from parking. They are foldable so that they are not in the way when they are not being used on the busy and narrow sidewalks. The talking arrows use the standard traffic sign poles as support. There is a small device with one arrow and a bigger one with three arrows. The small one tells people what’s coming up in the direction it is pointing at and also tells a little story about the specific street which it is on. The big one have three different arrows which are different categories; culture, food and transportation. These will tell people information about that category starting with the closest one, in the direction the arrow is pointing, and then keep on further and further until the person listening is walking away or moves the arrow. The information will change according to the time of the day telling the most relevant things, e.g. in the case of the food category it will only tell you the restaurants that are open. The arrows can also be set to five different languages; Italian, English, French, German and Chinese.

How It Works?
The seat hangs on the steel bars and is also fixed with a hinge in the ground. The lower part can be flipped out which reveals the surface to sit on. When the person using it is leaving, springs inside will automatically flip it back again. It uses stainless steel for all hard components and rubber from old tires for the flexible parts. The talking arrows have three main parts. First a thin aluminum sheet, that goes directly on the pole, where the different languages are printed. Then the arrow or arrows are put over it and the whole thing is locked on the pole with stops that squeezes the sheet to the pole. The arrows contains a speaker, an electric compass, four sensors to tell if there is a person listening, solar panels, a battery and LED lights.

Value & Potential
City city bang bang is very cheap and doesn’t use much space. This means that it can be placed all around the city to assist the visitors and also the inhabitants. It can be useful during the expo but also when the expo is over since the information the arrows contain can always be updated according to specific needs and resting is something that people always need.