buzzcut

(Board) Games and Architecture

Oct
04

.

Maharaja game box

A game about architecture? Maybe

There is an ongoing interest in the idea of games and architecture. Usually this means videogames. And usually this means how buildings are designed in games.

When you want to think more about the concept of games and the concept of architecture, I think it helps to look at board games. I have taught an urban planning class using games, and I found that board and card games were generally better at peeling back the principles of planning that I wanted to talk about. SimCity is a lot of fun. But you have to spend a lot of time pulling back the curtains on the software to get to the heart of the matter.

I have not tried teaching architecture with games. But the idea intrigues me. So, I was happy to find this list of board games that feature, or other, relate to architecture in some way or another.

Keep on tricky thing in mind. Games are very spatial things. They tend to happen on a board or a court or a screen. Their spatiality tends to be one of their primary attributes. So, when looking for games about architecture, there may be some wonderful games that don’t directly deal with architecture, per se, but may actually speak more to the subject that games that send you around building little buildings

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.