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Short Abstract

At the confluence of cultural heritage, sustainable renovation, and participatory design, we experiment with a novel citizen science methodology, the Talking Buildings, which invites citizens to give a voice to cultural heritage buildings, by using an impersonation game under various framings.

Abstract

We introduce a promising citizen science methodology based on the Talking Buildings Game, which has been launched in Rhodes, Greece, through an open call to the community via local radio and social media. Talking Buildings <talkingbuildings.net> consists of two invitations to engage in the collaborative research process: one public, and one for researchers. The public invitation is to be addressed to active users of schools or universities, which are cultural heritage buildings, who have the personal interest and capacity to engage in long-term processes with their own building.

Building users are confronted with a simple task / challenge: To observe their buildings using all their senses, by focusing at different scales and levels of detail, to identify, frame, and connect with relevant parts of the building that are of special interest, and then to narrate a story or contribute a multimedia account from the building’s perspective or of specific parts of it, to give them a voice. Each outcome of this simple process, observe-frame-narrate, we call a building account.

Researchers have their own task / challenge to fulfill: To describe simple observation challenges guiding the observe-frame-narrate process, and provide account interpretations for those building accounts pertinent to their fields. In Rhodes, people from all walks of life are immersed in the Talking Buildings Game, with encouraging results of the initial experiment. That is setting the scene for co-designing a second phase of engagement in more concrete framings, in cooperation with the local research team and community.