Professor Iain Borden is participating in The Urban Toy Box – a conference organised by the Construction Industry Council and the RIBA to explore the serious side to playful spaces in the built environment.

Iain's talk – Super Mario World: Platform Gaming in Real Spaces – explores how playful practices such as skateboarding and free-running offer new interpretations of city spaces and provide new challenges for architects and urban designers.

The aim of this full day conference is to provide attendees with a theoretical background to play and the urban environment, whilst picking up some ideas and tips to develop further creativity and innovation in their community and towns and cities.

The Urban Toy Box uses as its starting point the idea that games and play reflect and effect the social and political culture in which they are played, and in turn, that the specific skills and approaches that games and play utilise can be - or indeed need to be - applied to developing the urban environment for a modern society in uncertain economic times.

Full details on the CIC website.