As part of this year’s Venice Biennale, architect Sean Lally of Switzerland-based Sean Lally Architecture has paired a physical installation with an immersive simulation video game. 

Shaped Touches is an investigation into the ways architecture and space can be perceived, showcasing the inherent subjectivity of the craft. The project is centered around climate change, specifically the impact it will continue to have on the way future environments are experienced. Using a virtual platform, Lally provides unfamiliar and potential perspectives to its users.

“Architects are in a position to foreshadow the opportunities and implications these pressures will have on shared public spaces,” reads the project description. “Shaped Touches offers a proposition for how architecture will define its shape and the relationships of people and communities touching that space.”

Within the video game, players explore a design space. Every minute, the game restarts in the same space but with new sensory perceptions. These include seeing with red-green color blindness, in a near-infrared light spectrum, and in ultraviolet; the ability to hear plants communicate in low frequency and an inability to hear common sound frequencies with infrasound hearing; and experiencing augmented reality. 

A built prototype within the Biennale exhibition space demonstrates the design being simulated in the game. 

“Architecture’s shape is less of an objective form and more of a spectrum of sensorial shapes layered upon one another for those with varying access,” states the description.

“Architecture’s shape is less of an objective form and more of a spectrum of sensorial shapes layered upon one another for those with varying access,” states the description. “Much like a radio dial, occupying the same space might not mean you’re tuned to the same architecture...leading to immense creativity as well as public space to potentially fragment even further.”

Shaped Touches is available to play on online video game distributor Steam.