March 2009 Archives

Design Games

By Aaron Westre on March 20, 2009 3:50 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

A course about rethinking digital architectural design tools at the University of Minnesota, Spring 2009.

Course Description
How is the architectural design process a game? How could video gaming influence architectural design? In this course students will explore the world of digital game play and propose new modes of designing based on their findings. Using a simple programming toolkit, students will design and build game software that presents new ways to see the design process. No prior experience with either computer programming or video games is necessary; course assignments will be geared toward students new to these topics.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this course students should be able to: 
  • think critically about design processes in terms of the concepts of play, gaming, and interface.
  • develop new design processes by combining elements from various forms of game play.
  • realize game designs by building software using basic programming skills acquired through course assignments.

Modes of Inquiry
This course will rely primarily on process-based instruction as a mode of inquiry, utilizing computer programming as a primary medium. Programming will be taught only to a level sufficient to enable students to use it as a tool to realize their envisioned design games. The majority of learning will happen in programming workshops in which students and the instructor collaboratively translate ideas into computer code. In addition to the process-based instruction, students will engage in research into digital game play and human-computer interfaces.

Expected Outcomes
The outcomes of the course exercises will be a set of simple software applications that present playful ways for designers to create using computers. These software applications will take the form of rough prototypes and a final (not necessarily "finished") design game. In addition to the software, students will also make two short presentations: one on a digital game and one on a human-computer interface device.

Course Documents

Student Work

The work presented here represents the final results of student work during the seven week course. In each zip file there is the final design game software, source code, introductory text, and an initial sketch by each team. The software applications included here are works-in-progress (completed in a short five weeks) and thus are not complete by commercial standards. They are meant to show trajectory and progress of each team at the end of the course.

Architetris
Team 1: John Jacobs, Kim Kantrud, Caralyn Stevens

"Create quick floor layouts by guiding the falling furniture."
Download design game: windows | mac

Chizellin'
Team 2: Alex Bryan, Me'osha Solsberry, Mark Zeitler

"You and your chisel family are on a mission to complete the incomplete, and YOU have been called to chisel part of a whole."
Download design game: windows | mac

Bomb Squad
Team 3: Rob Daley, John Dockry, Griffin Jameson

"Locate the bomb within each level before time expires and answer an architecture related question to avoid disaster."
Download design game: windows | mac

Kiragami
Team 4: Addison Siewert, Dane Steinlicht, Erin Stromgren

"Beat the clock by cutting the paper to make it fold."
Download design game: windows | mac

Zombitecture
Team 5: Sunny Lam, Joe Mollen, Mike Rucinski

"On a 3D cube world zombies have taken over... kill them and watch the world change."
Download design game: windows | mac

Lil' Planners
Team 6:Rachel Gieseke, Shreija Madhusuodanan, Amy Wolff

"The drafting table is empty so it's YOUR JOB, Lil' Planners, to FILL IT UP!"
Download design game: windows | mac

Building Blocks
Team 7: Corey Pederson, John Maurer, Bethany Wolvington

"Reassemble the blocks to restore the original forms that fell from the sky."
Download design game: windows | mac

Example Code

Reference Texts

Web Resources

A Brief Tour of Replicant Architecture

By Aaron Westre on March 10, 2009 6:27 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
A paper written for Robert Ferguson's seminar The City as Theater at the University of Minnesota, spring 2008.

Excerpt:

"The image is familiar enough - the Eiffel Tower bathed in the dim, multi-colored light of a fireworks display - but something is askew here. (fig. 1) Gone are the trees and buildings that line the Champs de Mars, replaced by a near infestation of construction cranes. The reason for this uncanny quality is that this particular Eiffel Tower is in Tianducheng, a new residential development outside Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.1 Upon a bit of research, one is struck by another uncanny realization: there are over twenty, more or less exact scale replicas of, the Eiffel Tower in the world.2 The most intriguing question in the face of this realization is: why? Why is the Eiffel Tower such a seductive target for replication? Why does this drive to reproduce copies appear to be so universal?"

A Digital Rocaille

By Aaron Westre on March 10, 2009 6:08 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
A paper written for Robert Ferguson's seminar The Cave and the Light, spring 2007. Presented at the 2007 Minnesota Society of Architectural Historians Student Symposium.

Excerpt:

"The link is in the simulation itself - in the creation of alternate realities. Both rocaille and generative design create these alternate realities through the abstraction of natural phenomenon. Rocaille's reality is shaped by its grotesque metamorphosis of biomorphic forms. Generative design's reality is created through an abstraction of natural phenomenon into logical procedure. Both share the quality of the uncanny. Their products seem familiar and foreign at once. In both autonomy is an essential quality, manifest directly in forms that seem to grow and transform of their own accord. There is that sense of naturalistic artifice, a sense that once the author sets the process in motion there is little they or anyone else can do to stop it. It is this growing, moving, lifelike quality that points to deep similarities between these two forms of expression that at first glance seem worlds apart. There is a sense of wonder and magic, play and experiment that pervade both ways of designing. Perhaps the most magical aspect of both is that this wonder emerges out of the power of simple actions repeated."

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