54 Cities

54 Cities / 2015 / as part of Matheson Marcault

54 Cities is a deck of cards – and also a set of walks around Kensington and Chelsea. Each suit in the deck (Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds) matches up with a route.

Players take part by following the routes and looking at the illustrations and stories on the cards, figuring out which one matches the place where they’re standing. To complete a route, just match all of the cards to one of the marked locations.

The individual walkswere designed to take between one and two hours, passing through parks and leafy backstreets – and past plenty of places to stop for a quick cup of tea. Each route had its own theme (loss and obsession for hearts, for example, and the hidden underground stories of the street for spades). They combined familiar stories with little-known discoveries about the borough, from the invention of afternoon tea to pet angry pet wombats.

Collaborators: Martina Paukova (illustator); Studio M E O W (graphic design).

54 Cities was a commission for InTRANSIT Festival (2015).