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As part of the design community’s incorporation of talent into the nascent, ever-growing world of blockchain technology and digital architecture, more spaces are cropping up that have the potential to do outsized business opportunities with ramifications in the metaverse and beyond. One of those... View full entry
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... View full entry
Architecture's influence in video game design has reached new heights over the years, providing architects and video game designers the ability to blend digital computation, mesmerizing graphics, and unforgettable worlds gamers can explore and get lost within. Manifold Garden is one such example... View full entry
Minecraft has come a long way since its introduction a decade ago. It remains one of the top paid mobile games in Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store, while Minecraft: Education Edition has become a popular way to teach kids things like computer coding, engineering, architecture, urban planning and math. — CNET
The popular sandbox video game, Minecraft, known for enabling players to craft worlds, structures, objects, and pretty much anything one can imagine within its framework, has been due for "a major update since 2017." The "Super Duper Graphics Pack was expected to bring more lighting... View full entry
Faculty in the Department of Architecture have received a cash gift from Epic Games Inc. in support of their work on Virtual Places, a project that is adapting the company's virtual reality (VR) gaming engine, Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), for architectural and urban design. — Cornell University
Three Cornell professors used virtual reality to create and expand on their research project Virtual Places. The study of architecture and video games is a growing focus. Within academia and practice, VR is a tool which helps unpack architectural ideas for learning as well as creating... View full entry
It’s nighttime and you find yourself in a small, dark flat in a nondescript suburb in Russia. You look out of the window and see the courtyard covered in snow, illuminated by street lamps and the cold neon glare of storefronts. You turn on the light switch and look around your apartment. This is the melancholy start of a new immersive game made by developer Alexander Ignatov and poet Ilia Mazo. — The Calvert Journal
The setting and landscapes of video game worlds add to the overall gaming experience, particularly free roaming games. Called a "sandbox" in the gaming community, the mission-less free to roam game allows the player to wander throughout the virtual world. Without a plot or mission to accomplish... View full entry
Captivating audiences with their brief presentation at last year's 2018 E3 Expo, the game's development team Shedworks featured a strikingly captivating trailer that showed a world filled with beautiful desert landscapes, eye-catching color palettes, and of course beautiful renditions of towering... View full entry
North London video game developer, Shedworks, have developed a specially commissioned film for our exhibition Disappear Here: On perspective and other kinds of space, in collaboration with Sam Jacob Studio. We spoke to Greg Kythreotis, co-founder of Shedworks, to find out more about how the video came about and the processes behind it. — RIBA
RIBA interviews Greg Kythreotis, co-founder of video game studio Shedworks; talking about his involvement in the current Disappear Here: On perspective and other kinds of space exhibition at the RIBA Architecture Gallery in London, the collaboration with Sam Jacob Studio, and potential overlaps... View full entry
Architect Jose Sanchez is the co-creator of Block'hood, a city-building computer game that runs on real city data. Under his practice, plethora-project (covering architecture and indie game development), he focuses on how play can initiate design practice. In Block’hood, players build cities... View full entry
Frank Lloyd Wright, level designer? That’s what artist William Chyr was thinking, from the moment he crossed the threshold at the Robie House...It was a rare IRL architectural excursion, as Chyr has been immersed in building the digital levels of Manifold Garden, his first-person 3D exploration game in which you defy gravity in order to walk up walls, fall through windows, and launch yourself from one side to the other of an infinite stepwell, [while] solving increasingly difficult puzzles. — Curbed
Alexandra Lange interviews video game designer William Chyr on his upcoming game, “Manifold Garden”, which is due for a January 2017 release on PlayStation 4. “Chyr has slowly incorporated more architectural references,” Lange writes, ”stretching back through the centuries and including... View full entry
Dark Souls and Bloodborne both put the player in decaying worlds and invite them to peel back layers of history. From the ruins of Firelink Shrine and its relationship to the Undead Church above it, to the various connections between Bloodborne’s Central Yharnam, Old Yharnam and Cathedral Ward, Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team of environment designers imply much of the game’s narrative through the clash between one architectural style and another; between one layer of history and the next. — Alphr.com
Perhaps you're ready to take a break from diving and dodging through problematic MEP in Rhino to enjoy the scripted unfurling of these (non-deadline driven) complex spatial narratives, some of which are inspired by the work of real-world firms like Herzog & de Meuron.What's new in... View full entry
The BlockWorks studio proves, yet again, that architects can use Minecraft as a design tool to produce rather magical results with impressive detail. The team of architects, designers, and animators envision mystical cubic worlds in response to what they refer to as "Briefs", which include... View full entry
Australia’s next national park could be designed on the video game Minecraft – and by primary school children – if a new venture by the [NRAMLR] goes to plan. In a move worthy of Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, pupils from the Adelaide Hills area have been invited to design their 'perfect national park' using the block-building game, with $8.9m allotted to bring the winning student’s design to life. — The Guardian
Epic Games, the company best known for Gears of War, has a very different plan for this generation of video games — one that expands far beyond what games are typically assumed to be. [...]
In this future, or present if you ask Sweeney, lessons learned from one field, say an architect designing a virtual building, can be applied to games or film, and likewise. Sweeney believes the potential application of the engine across all fields increases exponentially as information is shared.
— theverge.com
The issue of homelessness in SimCity was recently taken on by an article at Vice News’s tech blog, Motherboard. The article focuses on Matteo Bittanti, a professor at Milan’s IULM University, who became increasingly interested in homelessness in the game. [...]
Bittani was so interested in it that he began compiling quotes from SimCity users intent on dealing with the virtual homeless, ultimately publishing them in a 600 page, two volume mega-book called “How to get rid of the homeless”.
— thisbigcity.net
Related:Exclusionary Strategies: Laws and Designs Used to Oust Homeless PopulationCan a City Really 'End' Homelessness?Honolulu Law Criminalizes Homelessness View full entry
