I found out about Brutalist architecture from my love for taking photos in urban areas. Derived from the French term “béton brut” meaning “raw concrete”. This form of architecture emerged in the 1950s. Brutalist buildings show their honesty of structure with visibility of the materials used such as concrete and exposed beams.

I created this board game called Urban Sprawl with a focus on education and Brutalist buildings in the Twin Cities. This game addresses the factors which shape gentrification such as environment, equity, and economics.

The design process consisted of creating print materials in InDesign for the score card and a manual brochure for the instructions, designing a board layout and hexagon road pieces to be sent through the laser cutter, using Tinkercad software to create miniature 3-Dimensional buildings to be printed, purchasing game materials, spray painting items, creating a box out of wood with a groove, and creating divider inserts with black foam board.

Urban Sprawl meets my goals by creating a fun and engaging way to educate people about Brutalist architecture in the Twin Cities and creating awareness about other issues surrounding architecture such as gentrification.

The object of this game is to rank up the most positive points on your score card by rolling the dice or collecting the colored game pieces and building pieces upon exiting a players’ designated gateway. When the dice is rolled, players correspond the number on the die to the number on the game manual for the addition or loss of points. The game manual also contains fun facts regarding gentrification, Brutalist architecture and topics surrounding economy, equity and environment within the Twin Cities.

Players can receive negative points and be blocked by traffic cones. Once all of the game pieces are off the board, the game is over. The player with the most positive points wins the game!