Urban Play is a card game that communicates architecture and urban planning in a playful way. It combines classic game mechanics with urban design content.
Primarily for prospective students (upper secondary school, open house events) and first-year students in architecture and urban planning. Educators can also request materials for their courses.
Urban Play can be played as Quartet, Super Trumps, or Pairs. This guarantees variety.
48 cards: 24 quartet cards and 24 plan cards, representing different types of urban building blocks and their metrics. There are also two reference cards that can be kept face-up during play to look up specific terms.
The metrics (GRZ, GFZ, density values) are based on the real plots and building data of the shown examples. For buildings that form an ensemble (one architect, one design), the values refer to the entire project.
For some cards, the shown building shares a plot with other independently constructed buildings. In these cases, a simplified plot (*) is derived that encompasses only the shown urban building block — keeping the values comparable. More on this in the Glossary.
For connected complexes, the Gross Floor Area (GFA) includes all buildings – for example, at a school: the main building, the sports hall, and any ancillary buildings. This captures the total built use of the urban building block.
Both! It works as teaching material in higher education, as a discussion prompt in workshops, and as a reference tool in practice.
Urban Play is not commercially distributed – it is an educational project. Educational institutions (schools, universities) can request game materials free of charge. Please note that the card game is currently available in German only. Just send us an email!
Urban Play was created at the Institute for Design Strategies (IDS) at TH OWL under the direction of Dr. Marcel Cardinali. It was based on student designs from the Urban Building Typology module, developed into a professional card game in cooperation with international architecture firms and with funding from TRiNNOVATION OWL.
Because complex topics can be conveyed in a vivid, motivating, and accessible way. Playful learning fosters curiosity, understanding, and exchange.
Yes! New cards and updates are released annually at the start of the winter semester (October to January). This keeps the game current with new architecture projects from the university seminar.
On this website, in accompanying publications, and at events organized as part of the project.
No, prior knowledge is not required. The card game is also meant to spark interest in urban design interactions. With the instructions and reference cards, it is definitely playable without any prior knowledge.
Detailed instructions can be found here: Go to instructions
Feel free to contact us here too. The game is updated annually, so there will be new examples every year.
If you are interested, please get in touch at urbanplay@th-owl.de
The density values (RU/ha, Jobs/ha, Edu/ha, SF/ha) show how intensively an urban building block is used – comparable to real urban districts. A detailed explanation with calculation formulas and classification into 5 density levels can be found under Game Cards → Understanding Density Values.
Each of the six categories contains four cards with different variants. These follow their own logic depending on the category:
In built reality, buildings rarely show a pure typology. Most projects combine multiple aspects or deviate from the idealized category. This is not an error, but an expression of architectural practice. URBAN PLAY deliberately uses these real-world examples as illustrative material: they provide an opportunity to discuss why a building was assigned to its category and where it deviates from it.