An initiative of Back Room Strategies
Apps for the world right in front of you.
flâ·ne·rie
Flânerie (flah-nuh-REE) is a French word for the practice of attentive strolling — moving slowly enough through the world to actually see it. The term came out of 19th-century Paris by way of Baudelaire and was sharpened by Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Projectinto a small philosophy of attention: that what’s around you is worth looking at, that looking takes time, and that habit is a form of blindness from which one has to be slowly recalled.
The apps under Project Flânerie are built in that spirit. Each one picks a different kind of looking — at public art, at the perceptual frame itself, at color in the world — and gives you a reason to do it. They aren’t productivity tools or wellness tools. They are small inducements to attend to where you are.
The apps
Public art on the ground.
Sculptures, murals, installations, monuments — tens of thousands of pieces across 200+ cities in 80+ countries, drawn from OpenStreetMap and city open-data portals. Urban Gallery shows you what’s near you, on every block, and builds walking tours from where you stand.
Visit Urban Gallery →Quiet noticing prompts.
When you’ve been scrolling for a while, Umwelt sends a single small question. One question. An answer if you feel like it. Nothing else. The app sees only that a scroll app is on screen, never what’s inside it. Everything you write or capture stays on your phone.
Visit Umwelt →Finding color in the world.
A daily camera-based color game. Three colors arrive each morning — drawn from a century of color theory, beginning with Sanzo Wada’s 1933 Dictionary — and you use your phone’s camera to find them in the world around you. No accounts, no ads, no photos saved.
Visit Haishoku →Project Flânerie is one of three initiatives of Back Room Strategies, a civic strategy practice based in Colorado Springs. The apps are made by Seth Palmer Harris, the firm’s principal.
To know when a new app launches, write to seth@backroomstrategies.com.