Essay

I think it is interesting for you as an architect to take a look at another dimension of something you use everyday — the computer. More specifically, think of how you typically work to design your own visualizations of a building design for the future.

Perhaps you start with real world challenges and work backwards from them to come up with your masterpiece. But what if, instead, you could just have a “design playground” of sorts, in which to hone your design skills and let your problem solving skills sharpen — without the constant constraints from your typical “real-world” way of working. What if you could engage in an “architectural gaming environment”?

In an interesting talk given by Jane McGonigal, entitled Gaming Can Make a Better World, she shares the idea that so many people are gaming today, and so many more will be gaming in the future, that it only stands to our benefit to capitalize upon this tremendous resource which is building exponentially right now. In the video below, you will hear how she describes the unique qualities that gamers have (like the ability to get up and try again when attempts don’t work, coupled with their “tight-knit social fabric” which can give them a collective edge).

In the video, McGonigal states that gamers actually are a resource with untapped potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. And since gamers have certain innate qualities that are developed and honed over so much time spent gaming, they develop certain characteristics or qualities that make them an invaluable resource to help with some of the world’s biggest problems like poverty, homelessness and even hunger.

I have to say that much of what she says does make some sense. And I cannot help but think about how this can be translated into our discipline where architecture plays a role that is inevitably tied in some of the “world’s biggest problems” as mentioned above. In some ways, I think architects are doing well and that we are using virtual reality to literally design a better world — with digital media software and hardware that we use to make our design solutions a reality.

However, I cannot help but think what might happen if we also engage in some type of virtual gaming situation where there is a certain freedom by which we can explore and test our design ideas — ideas which might not be possible to build today because of either inadequate technology, inadequate budget or inadequate time availability. Within an architectural gaming environment, perhaps rules can be set that challenge us to solve collective problems found in many buildings around the globe, and not just that one on our drawing board. Also, in a gaming environment, we have the ability to pool a larger massing of design professionals to both challenge our solutions as we come up with them, and to help us in a team-like manner.

So, would this all make us better designers? Would we all collectively strive to design even more amazing solutions than what we are seeing today? And might that help us to advance and speed up the architectural evolutionary process? Give some of these questions some thought as you watch the video below by Jane McGonigal:

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Image Credit: © Tor Lindstrand | Flickr The use of different game engines to explore interfaces between gaming and the production of space.--- by Tor LIndstrand (Production of Architecture)