Architecture and Planning: It’s All Fun and Games
Cities as as systems/games and systems literacy
Thinking in systems can help us make better games, of course. But can thinking about cities as games help us make better games?
Cities are systems, or rather, many systems that interconnect. Like buildings, they can be thought of as having layers, each changing at its own pace. If those layers are loosely coupled, the city — like the building — can adapt.
Recently, new urban layers/systems have started to emerge. They are made up of rapidly proliferating computing power, carried by people and embedded in the environment, used to access vast amounts of data.
At the same time, games have given rise to a new form of literacy —systemic literacy. However, to date, players have mostly inhabited the systems that make up games. They can read them. Writing, on the other hand, is another matter. True systemic literacy means being able tochange the systems you inhabit.
True read/write systemic literacy can be used to craft games, yes. But it can also be used to see that many other problems and challenges in daily life are systemic ones.
Here the author asks a very good question about our need for authenticity in hobby models. His solution is proposed as a project:
A few things collided in my head a while ago:
* How much I like model railway lay-outs (a lot)
* A wondering about why model railway lay-outs always evoke the past – rarely the future
Original Sin
The New York Times, a little late to the party perhaps, recaps how architects use SL to prototype play and peddle their wares.
Dubai
When it comes to architecture and fun, you have to keep tabs on Dubai. A review of a recent book on the city state underlines the book's subtitle–"The vulnerability of success".
Gamespace
A collection of papers and the outline of a dissertation in development, all situated in the intersection of games and architecture and focused on spatiality.
