Teaching.
Many of the projects I teach are related to architecture & gaming. Students in these projects often come up with ideas that surprise me and which I would not have thought of myself. So in many ways, they teach me. This is a selection of assignments and student elaborations.
Fort Pod
2020 Architecture project
1st year Master Architecture, Urbanism & Landscape Architecture
img © Frederieke Hakman: Shelter for Students
Frederieke Hakman: “Many students struggle to find a suitable space for themselves. I made a space that inflates and adapts to the needs of the users.”
Lesson learned from Frederieke: games are fast and changeable, architecture slow and permanent. Frederieke made something in between: wearable architecture.
Assignment
Fort Pod
Pods are everywhere. Our everyday life and public space are podifying. In the already legendary series ‘Love is Blind’ pods are separated by a thin wall, so you can see but not hear each other. Tiny houses function as living pods, soundproof pods are installed in open offices for quiet individual working. There are napping pods, gaming pods and holiday pods. Why this podification? Is it because we like to be in our own bubble, yet part of a bigger community? Do we want to have the benefit of private space, without having the responsibility to clean and maintain it? Do we crave the peace and quiet of secluded space in our evermore connected and stimulating world? Is it a substitute for the lost world of cells in monasteries? What is sure is that the pod is “not a home, but a single generic cell that belongs to the entirety of the metropolis” (Aureli and Tattara, 2018).
In this project we are going to make FORT POD, a fortress turned into the epitome of podness, reflecting our love for pods and shedding more light on the phenomenon. The building can consist of a series of pods, or it can be one big pod. The program can be anything you feel deserves a pod, excluding the obvious choices: living pods and study pods are already there, we are going to make something that deserves a pod but hasn’t been thought of yet.
img © Giulio Angeli: The act of waiting
Giulio Angeli: “A pod for individual proactive waiting, like a private mental vent.”
Lesson learned from Giulio: a very intuitive kind of Barbarella architecture, sometimes not overthinking architecture gives the best results.
FUTURE CITY
img © Parisa Ghanbarifard, David Heesen, Jay van Helderen, Sterre Hubers, Kaan Kalak, Bram Stads, Luuk Vermeer, Isa Bosmans
Future city.
2020 Urbanism/IT/International Lifestyle Studies project
Bachelor and master students
Lesson learned from Parisa e.a.: their design is a digital version of the physical escape room, that in in turn was derived from ‘escape-the-room’–style video games. From digital to physical and back, a phenomenon can jump back and forth gaining cultural significance.
Together with Saar van der Spek, Michael Schifferling, Bart Haazen, Linda Hofman, and Chris Geene, we taught a course where students were working in mixed groups of the faculties IT, International Lifestyle Studies and Architecture/Urbanism. In these groups, they designed a multi sensory urban experience of future Tilburg.
Dwarf Fortress, losing is fun!
2019 Architecture project
1st year Master Architecture, Urbanism & Landscape Architecture
img ©
Anthea Pappà: Blind Light
Anthea Pappà: “How to translate the experience of being in digital space into a spatial experience? What is the identity of the ‘digital’ self? A landscape of shadows
coexisting in digital space.”
Lesson learned from Anthea: we don't have to feel restricted and can put a large amount of gaming culture, philosophy and world history in one single building design, with a strong result.
Assignment
Dwarf Fortress, losing is fun!
In 2012 the MOMA added a series of video games to their collection, including Dwarf Fortress. It lives in the basement, in a vault on a server. If a war would break out tomorrow and we would be bombed, we would still have dwarf fortress living in the dungeons of the MOMA. As a visitor to the museum, however, this doesn’t let you experience Dwarf Fortress. If the MOMA would place a computer in the exhibition rooms enabling visitors to play Dwarf Fortress, it would not make sense because you can play it just as well on your computer at home, in the train, wherever you are. You don’t need to go to a museum for that.
This is why we will design a built version of Dwarf Fortress. An incarnated, solidified version, that you can physically visit and experience. This is not as easy as it sounds. Because the architecture in Dwarf Fortress is randomly generated, the layout is completely different every time you enter the game. So there is no building you can just copy and physically build. So you as an architect will have to dive deep into the structure of Dwarf Fortress, to figure out what is the essence of the game that you will make a built version of.
img © Richard Doensen: Destination Unknown
Lesson learned from Richard: translating game space into architecture can be done metaphorically, in this case, visitors to the pavilion think they have a free choice of direction, but in fact, they don’t, just like in the game Dwarf Fortress.
EVIL GENIUS HEADQUARTERS
Evil genius Headquarters.
2018 Architecture project
1st year Master Architecture, Urbanism & Landscape Architecture
model/posters © Arthur van der Laaken
Arthur van der Laaken: “The structure will grow over time, like a parasite using newly built skyscrapers to extend the maze for new volunteering heroes.”
Lesson learned from Arthur: combining a small number of simple architectural elements randomly results in an almost infinite amount of possibilities of compelling complex architecture.
Evil geniuses in films and games always have the best lairs: like all the evil lairs in James Bond movies. In games, think about ‘the Citadel’ in Half-Life 2 or evil Grand Vizier Jaffar’s palace with dungeons in the 1989 game Prince of Persia.
In this assignment, you will take your favorite Evil genius from a game and provide him with a headquarters in the physical world. This command post will be placed on top of one of Amsterdam’s buildings, where the Evil genius has a good view, high above the city.
Game designers often use design methods and spatial ingenuities that differ from traditional (physical) architecture. Not all of these principles can be used in physical architecture because we as architects have to respond to gravity and suchlike, but many other principles cán be adopted. By doing this, we can make architecture much more adventurous than it is now. We are going to figure out what we can ‘borrow’ from game-space to use in this physical building that will give your villain the best lair. In addition to these spatial tools we will also use design tools used in the gaming industry: game designers don’t start from floor plans. They start by drawing scenes, often with a pencil, and later these scenes are woven together to create a narrative.
The headquarters will be about 1000 m3. It should be an adventurous building, that puts even the most imaginative game-space to shame.