Future Cities Glasgow Engagement Hubs

Graven was commissioned to design, build, manage and construct the Future Cities engagement hubs for Future City Glasgow, an ambitious ‘smart city’ demonstration scheme.

In 2013, Glasgow beat a host of other UK cities to win funding worth £24m from the Technology Strategy Board (now known as Innovate UK) to explore innovative ways to use technology and data to make life in the city safer, smarter and more sustainable.

Future City Glasgow is an ambitious programme which will demonstrate how technology can make life in the city smarter, safer and more sustainable. The ‘Demonstrator Programme’ provided an opportunity to make Glasgow an open, data-driven, innovative, engaging future city.

Our solution was to be essentially nomadic in the use of shipping containers – ensuring that the exterior appearance of the ‘containers’ was appropriately on-brand and on-message. The intention of all the hubs was to provide places for visitors to engage, explore and contribute through various stories, films, interactives and events. The displays, and the stories conveyed engaged personal allowing the visitor to understand the topics being discussed by focussing on practical detail in one specific setting and the effect upon the people who live in Glasgow.

It was important the ‘Hubs’ were innovative and engaging and people felt encouraged to explore and interact with the Hubs. The structures responded to the needs of story-telling and interactive communication and we worked with the other creative teams to realise the full potential of this.

OPEN Glasgow
Future City Glasgow Project