Archinect - News

You can now play Tetris with Soviet-style housing blocks

2018-04-18T14:13:00-04:00

If you've been around the 'architecture-can-be-fun-too'-focused internet for a while, you may remember Sergej Hein's semi-viral gem of a video, Berlin Block Tetris, which was exactly that: an animated version of the video game classic using building blocks that resembled socialist-era residential high-rises.

Lithuanian designer Lukas Valiauga has now taken the idea to the next, interactive, level and created the mobile app Tower Block Game.

Tower Block Game by Lukas Valiauga

"This game is a playful tribute to a not so playful reality of monotonous and bleak cityscapes built out of same prefabricated concrete blocks," the app description explains. "Very specific for Eastern-Europe but evident everywhere else, too. These relic tower blocks usually mark failed social programmes and neighbourhoods planned as clumsy as some failed building block game… On that note, build and demolish one for yourself!"

Tower Block Game is available for Android from the Google Play store.

Not much of a gam...

MVRDV "Tetristecture" coming to Germany

2018-02-01T17:59:00-05:00

MVRDV is further embracing its trademark pixel style with a new commission in the German city of Esslingen: dubbed "Crystal Rock", the design for a new 6,500-sqm, 12-story mixed-use office development sports a part-QR-code-covered/part-reflective facade and a giant Minecraft-style hole that's been punched through the building's center.

From MVRDV: "The buildings’ volume is pushed inwards to create a fragmented facade, an ‘Esslinger grotto’ that reflects its actual topography and forms an open public walkway right through the center, marking the location of the central district. On upper levels, offices are located and envisioned as light, attractive and flexible spaces that are customizable for different users to create combinations of work and life. On the ground level, the crystal rock facade opens up to the public square in front connecting the city to the building and provides public amenities including a café, restaurant and meeting areas."

"The Milestone’s partly...

MVRDV presents a tetris-like structure you can reconfigure at Dutch Design Week

2017-10-23T14:46:00-04:00

Dutch Design Week kicked off in Eindhoven over the weekend, with over 600 exhibitions and events taking place across the city as part of the week-long festival. The theme this year is "stretch," with initiatives exploring cutting-edge sustainable design, the role of robots and the future of flexible living. Projects range from shingles made of waste plastic to jackets created from self-growing textiles; from an Embassy of Robot Love to a small robotic firefly; from paint made out of fungus to a hotel that incorporates individual users’ wishes designed by MVRDV.

Titled (W)ego, the Future City is Flexible installation from the Rotterdam-based firm features nine tetris-shaped rooms that can be moved into different configurations, allowing it to adapt to the different needs of visitors. The firm developed the project in collaboration with their in-house research lab, the Why Factory. Run together with Delft University of Technolog...

Berlin Block Tetris

2009-10-16T17:27:00-04:00

Aaaand here's yet another Berlin-related post: Berlin Block Tetris from Sergej Hein on Vimeo.

Sergej Hein: "It´s kind of a parody about the former socialist building style. They use to build whole cities, without any change in House design or room layout to create cheep housing for workers (we call them Blocks). In Soviet times you could easily wake up at a friends place in another city and still feel like you are in your flat as the furniture was the same as well...

I was living in a Block on the opposite side of the street in Berlin 2 years ago. Living there remind me of my early childhood in Riga where we had nearly the same Blocks.

I think Alexei Paschitnow, the inventor of Tetris, had kind of the same Idea as me in spring 1984. I bet he was looking out of the window of his Block in Moscow and thought how do soviet architects actually plan this buildings?"