Smart Market

Smart Market is a physical installation built forCLEVER°FRANKEto close outSensor Lab's research programme on Smart Cities (July–November 2019), client work rather than independent practice. Presented as a fictional convenience store set in a near-future smart city, it puts citizen data-autonomy on the shelves, framing surveillance and consent as products visitors can pick up and examine.

The project grew out of Sensor Lab co-founderGert Franke's essayThe Invisible Revolution, arguing that as society moves online, the merge of the physical and digital world needs to be made tangible and legible to citizens. Community meet-ups and a resident survey found that 66% of respondents had never even heard the term "Smart City" — a gap that shaped five prototypes built over the programme: a Privacy Label, a Sensor Map, a Sensor Compass, a navigation app, and Smart Market itself as the culminating physical exhibit. Research was carried out with fellow Sensor Lab collaboratorsJeremy Raider,Marie-Luise Schlander,Loes Sloëtjes, andJooyoung Park; the Privacy Label prototype went on to win aGold Jury Prize at the European Design Awards.

Two further prototypes mapped that same transparency problem onto physical space: a Sensor Map visualising the density of smart-city sensors across a neighbourhood, and a Sensor Compass giving residents a directional read on the data collection happening around them.

A fifth prototype, a navigation app, rounded out the programme's five deliverables before Smart Market itself closed it out as a physical exhibit.

The store's "product range" consisted of technologies that give citizens transparency over, and autonomy over, their own data engagement — surveillance and consent rendered as retail goods rather than abstract policy. It was shown atCirque du Data, a Data Circus event exploring the digital transformation of urban living environments.

The installation was modelled in 3D before construction began, working through spatial layout and material choices digitally first.

The final structure was built from a steel frame topped with opaque plastic sheeting and LED tubes: clean, minimal, and deliberately clinical, matching the retail-as-surveillance framing.

Smart Market drew a steady crowd throughout Cirque du Data. Sensor Lab co-founder Gert Franke presented the installation directly to visitors as part of the programme.

The illuminated kiosk sign became part of the draw itself, pulling a steady stream of visitors in from the wood-panelled entrance throughout the event.

Smart Market's argument works because it doesn't editorialise — putting data-autonomy technologies on a shelf, lit like retail goods, lets visitors draw the surveillance-as-commerce conclusion themselves rather than being told it. The same instinct, transparency over mandate, runs through its four sibling prototypes: a nutrition label for data instead of policy text, a map and compass for sensing infrastructure instead of a terms-of-service document.