See below, three very relevant occurrences of how space is transformed in the 21st century. These are 3 examples of “defensive space” (aka “defensible space”: architectural and environmental design used to reduce criminality by increasing field of observation and ownership) can be found next to where I live in Geneva.

The first and the second one consist in covering the ground with concrete instead of the vague lawn that was used by drug dealers to hide their stuff. Note that the first move was (before putting concrete on that poor little tree) to break a mirror there so that drug deals would cut their hands when trying to get their heroine.

The third one is maybe less conspicuous: two pieces of steel has been put on the ground to prevent people to park their car (which nicely complements the yellow signage).

Why do I blog this? well although this is, sort of, environmental scannning 2 meters from home, it’s definitely an important collection of signals that attest spatial changes. What does that mean for urban computing? I guess the next step when you’re done with concrete, steel and broken mirror is to use electrons to prevent people from doing certain things.

Please see also the classical and sad anti-skateboard devices.

Speaking about Dubai, Mike Davis in his essay “Fear and Money in Dubai” highlight this quote from an article by Ian Parker in the New-Yorker:

“It’s as if a list of all known human pastimes have been collected on PowerPoint slides and then casually voted on by a show of hands.“

Adam Greenfield’s talk at Pic Nic was entitled “The City is Here for You to Use: Urban Form and Experience in the Age of Ambient Informatics. His presentation is basically about the implications of ubiquitous computing on the form and experience of the city.

After “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing” Adam is now zooming on a more specific aspect of ubicomp: its influence on the urban environment. Inspired by Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander or Bernard Rurdofsky, he drawn our attention to their “generosity” about the life on the street and the recent changes exemplified by this quote from Alexander: “For centuries, the street provided city dwellers with usable public space right outside their houses. Now, in a number of subtle ways, the modern city has made streets which are for “going through,” not for “staying in.“. Through various examples, Adam showed how “we killed the street” due to cars, traffic, overplanning, the “repeating module of doom” (succession of franchises) leading to what Augé calls “non-places” and Rem Koolhas refers to as “junkspace”. The city then becomes “stealthy, slippery, crusty, prickly and jittery” through defensible space elements such as the following one I spotted in Amsterdam last week:

This situation leads to various forms of “withdrawal syndromes”: ipod usage, mobile phone/blackberry digging… and the city is less “a negotiation machine between humans“. In sum, “we lost something” and instead of lamenting (”nostalgia is for suckers”), Adam highlights the challenge: to rediscover the city of Jacobs, Rudofsky and Alexander in a way that is organic to our own age. This means that ubiquitous computing can be a candidate for that matter.

He then presented how ubiquitous computing (everyware) is already affecting cities. Information processing, sensors start showing up in new places at different scale. At the body level, he cited the Nike+ipod example, at the urban level, some dynamic signs allow people to be aware of bus schedule or use contact-cards, leading to more agency in infrastructures. This enable new model of interaction and “information processing dissolving in behavior“. The upside of this might be that people can get information about cities and their pattern of use, visualized in new ways (Stamen Design’s cabspotting, crime and real estate mapping, map of cities with WiFi hotspot)… and that information can be made available locally on demand in a way that people can act upon. Would ubicomp turn cities in more efficient and sustainable places? Possibly this is meant to allow better choices and entirely new behavior might emerge, will we get a participatory urbanism? a “genuine read/write urbanism” as he mentioned?

How will it affect urban forms? Adam showed some instances of how information as output at the building envelope: living glass modified by CO2 or the Blur Building by Diller-Scofidio (from swiss expo02). Ambient information becomes addressable, scriptable and/or query-able objects such as in the Chaos Computer Club Blinkenlights project.

(Picture courtesy of Diller-Scofidio)

One of the downside he presented concerned how this can lead to new inscriptions of class. He showed a DVD rental booth in NYC that allows cash to rent DVD but needs a credit card to access it. Another problem concerns the over-legibility of things: when there is too much explicitness and not enough ambiguity on plausible deniability, when everything is made public, what happens? maybe we do not want all our friends to know where we are, of course there are special case but not all the time.

Wegzeit is a project by Dietmar Offenhuber that I found interesting:

“Wegzeit is a project about Los Angeles and how it is transformed when brought to relative space. Asking someone in L.A. about the distance between two locations usually prompts a response in minutes. It seems paradoxical that people rely on subjective parameters for their spatial decisions in a city with a largely regular, cartesian layout. But especially here, where the influences of physical space are leveled by this regularity, the importance of subjective, relative spaces become visible more strongly.
The project consists of six dynamic virtual environments that propose models of how to visualize three-dimensional relative spaces. They deal with certain properties and effects caused by the nature of relative space such as the asymmetry of temporal distances.
(…)
in this example all the streets are represented by “rubberbands” between their intersections. temporal distance can now be introduced as force or rest length of the rubberband, and thus deforming the whole system. the topology of space is preserved this way, the result is a global, balanced view of the temporal space.“

Why do I blog this? I found intriguing this way of representing “temporal distance”, the visualization of space/time issues. Curious phenomenon to be reflected to city dwellers.

Alien Architecture: The Building/s of Extra-terrestrial Species - Pre-twentieth Century is a Georgia Leigh McGregor’s Honours Thesis from UTS. It deals with what kind of architecture is portrayed by pre-20th century “extra-terrestrial literature”. It’s basically a study of architectural imagination based on textual research (”. It includes both fiction and non-fiction and draws on a range of narrative and scientific works, including utopian, satirical, comedic, philosophical and adventure texts.“) that takes architecture as a “tool for understanding” the relationship between ourselves and an alien species, “proposing that architecture is one of the means by which the character of an alien species is read.”

Few curious insights from the conclusion:

“Consistently the architecture of alien beings has been the architecture of humanity with the wholesale transfer of architectural assumptions. The application of anthropometrics to alien forms, assuming a relationship between dimensions of an extra-terrestrial and their buildings, was made evident
(…)
In one way the architecture of extra-terrestrial civilisation has remained the same but different, to refer to Ben Jonson’s concept. The conventions of earthly architecture are repeated in space though changing and transforming
over time. The twentieth century would see an explosion in the quantity of other worldly literature and new media, with the advent of film and television, through which extra-terrestrial cultures would be portrayed. In the process many of these conventions would be reused and reinvented. Yet some of the most significant conventions arose prior to the twentieth century.
(…)
Extra-terrestrial architecture moved from representation at an individual level to a portrayal of society, as a whole, integrated with its urban fabric in this period. Architecture was used to create difference and to link to the familiar. Architecture and technology were confirmed as definitive evidence of an intelligent civilisation“

(”A View of the Inhabitants of the Moon” - Illustration from an 1836 English pamphlet, publisher unknown
- “Note the biped beavers on the right“)
Why do I blog this? my interest about space, technological implications in space and sci-fi led me to this paper. Lots of interesting stuff here (although it’s more food for thoughts than material for my research). I quite like the analysis of the implications as well as the description of the connections between the pieces of text and their context of production (in terms of scientific discovery, etc).

Space Time Play Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, edited by Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger (Birkhäuser/Springer Online bookstore). A big compendium of 140 writers, the book “explores the architectural history of computer games and the future of ludic space”. The table of content is impressive and I am looking forward to read as it seems to be a blueprint about this topic.

You can fin on-line the introduction about “Why should an architect care about computer games and What can a game designer take from architecture?“, which has some interesting perspectives and summarizes very well the issues as stake.

“The spaces of computer games range from two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional spaces to complex constructions of social communities to new conceptions of, applications for and interactions between existent physical spaces. (…) The spaces of the digital games that constitute themselves through
the convergence of “space,” “time” and “play” are only the beginning. What are the parameters of these new spaces? To what practices and functional specifications do they give rise? What design strategies will come into operation because of them? “

Of particular resonance with my research will be:

“THE ARCHITECTURE OF COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES, traces a short, spatiotemporal history of the architecture of digital games. Here, architects are interested in the question of what spatial qualities and characteristics arise from computer games and what implications these could have for contemporary architecture. For game designers and researchers, on the other hand, it’s about determining what game elements constitute space and which spatial attributes give rise to specific types of interaction. Moreover, it’s not just about the gamespaces in the computer, but about the places where the games are actually played; playing on a living-room TV is different from playing in front of a PC, which, in turn, is different from playing in a bar.

The third level, UBIQUITOUS GAMES, on the other hand, demonstrates how real space – be it a building, city or landscape – changes and expands when it is metamorphosed into a “game board” or “place to play” by means of new technologies and creative game concepts. (…) What happens when the spaces and social interactions of computer games are superimposed over physical space? What new forms and control systems of city, architecture and landscape become possible? (…) The migration of computer games onto the street – that is, the integration of physical spaces into game systems – creates new localities
(…)
4th level (…) how the ludic conquest of real and imagined gamespace becomes an instrument for the design of space-time. “

Why do I blog this? tons of material for my current research, I am expecting this to be good for thoughts for future projects. I also wrote a chapter with Fabien about how pervasive gaming can be seen as a re-interpretation of >la dérive situationiste (Guy Debord): a new way to experience the city environment.

The role of architecture in video games by Ernest Adams is a Gamasutra column that is very relevant to my research interests. Prior jumping into his explanation about this topic, the author compares the reasons of constructing buildings in the real world and in a video game. If protection or personal privacy (toilets) are not important i game architecture, military activity and general decoration certainly are.

Then he describes the primary functions of architecture in video games:

“The primary function of architecture in games is to support the gameplay. Buildings in games are not analogous to buildings in the real world, because most of the time their real-world functions are either
irrelevant or purely metaphorical. Rather, buildings in games are analogous to movie sets: incomplete, false fronts whose function is to support the narrative of the movie.
(…)
There are four major ways in which this happens:

• Constraint: architecture establishes boundaries that limit the freedom of movement of avatars or units. It also establishes constraints on the influence of weapons.
• Concealment: architecture is used to hide valuable (and sometimes dangerous) objects from the player; it’s also used to conceal the players from one another, or from their enemies.
• Obstacles and tests of skill: Chasms to jump across, cliffs to climb, trapdoors to avoid.
• Exploration: exploration challenges the player to understand the shape of the space he’s moving through, to know what leads to where.

The Secondary Function of Architecture in Games:

• Familiarity. Familiar locations offer cues to a place’s function and the events that are likely to take place there.
• Allusion. Game architecture can make reference to real buildings or architectural styles to take advantage
  of the ideas or emotions that they suggest.
• New worlds require new architecture. To create a sense of unfamiliarity, create unfamiliar spaces.
• Surrealism: It creates a sense of mystery and more importantly, it warns the player that things are not what they seem.
• Atmosphere. To create a game that feels dangerous, make it look dangerous.
• Comedic effect. Not all game worlds are familiar, dangerous, or weird; some are supposed to be lighthearted and funny.
• Architectural clichés: set a scene and establish player expectations quickly. These are a sort of variant on familiarity, without the benefit of being informed by real-life examples

“

Adams also gives pertinent examples of spatial elements that, considered as real-world architecture, would not be very sensible or coherent, but that are perfectly functional and fun as part of the game mechanic.

Why do I blog this? a very insightful review of how spatial features are important to support game mechanics. What is also important is that this reflects the game designer vision, which is complementary to the architecture view (see for example this article I blogged about the other day).

In addition, it made me think that this could also spark some interesting thoughts regarding physical space and pervasive gaming. Maybe this correspond to how parkour people see the physical environment, as game designers.

McGregor, G.L. (2006). Architecture, Space and Gameplay in World of Warcraft and Battle for Middle Earth 2 , Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Game research and development, pp.69-76.

This paper, which is very relevant to my work at the lab, is an architectural analysis of the spatial qualities of two video games: World of Warcraft and Battle for Middle Earth 2. The author starts by pointing out how game architecture is different from architecture in reality because the underlying rationale has a different purpose. In games, the architecture is created to produce challenges and gameplay.

The whole paper offers an analysis of two video games, let’s jump to the conclusion to see the main issues of interest to me, i.e. the meaning of space:

“Both games build on established fantasy traditions, using architectural and ecological diversity to differentiate races and spaces. Both games use architecture to clarify and simplify gameplay in two very different ways. World of Warcraft uses architecture and landscape as an organisational system that contains activity and builds on usage patterns from real life. In contrast BFME II creates architecture as a symbolic object that stands for complex systems within a flattened and simplified contested spacemap.
(…)
The dichotomy between architecture in videogames as a spatial entity or as an object suggests a primary division of games into those that are concerned with movement through space as a visceral experience and those that are not.
(…)
they operate with significantly different approaches to spatiality. On one hand we have a game that represents architecture and landscape as accessible and spatial, that is characterised by an embodiment in and a personal view of space, that focuses on an individual’s movement through that space and that simulates a physical (though primarily visual) experience of space. On the other we have a game that produces architecture as an object and the landscape as a map, that uses architecture to represent intangible concepts, that simplifies the landscape and favours an external viewpoint, a game that simulates a conceptual view of space in which codified relationships are more important than physical characteristics, favouring metaphor over corporeal experience. “

(Pictures taken from the paper: WoW and BFME II)

I was also interested in the part about affordances:

“It is interesting to briefly consider the architecture of both games in relation to notions of affordance, taking William Gaver’s separation of affordances and perceptual information. The architecture of BFME II exhibits a false affordance of conventional architectural/spatial use in the way it mimics the visual properties of real buildings. Other uses of architecture in gameplay, for example creating soldiers, exist as hidden affordances. BFME II relies on the gameplay manual and knowledge of established traditions in real-time strategy games to indicate to the player the buildings utility. Conversely World of Warcraft primarily exhibits perceptible affordances of customary architectural and spatial use to its architecture, creating a congruity between what between what the player perceives they can do and the activities they can perform. “

Why do I blog this? it’s been a long time that I am interested in finding this sort of paper, that would use architectural analysis of video game. This type of work is both interested for architecture (new objects to analyze, new behavior to observe, etc.) and for game design as it allows to understand more level design and how space could be articulated with game mechanics.

I am also wondering about how to go further, how to enrich game/level design through that sort of research analysis. Currently, I am gathering material like this paper and hopefully try to integrate this more deeply, maybe I’ll try to write a paper about architecture and gaming to formalize more the interconnections.

In a very insightful blogpost entitled “Is there research in the studio?”, Kazy Varnelis wonders about “research studios” in architecture. The main issue here is that”such studios invoke analysis rather than design as their method and aim for publication or exhibition as end products“. Quoting Turpin Bannister’s “The Research Heritage of the Architectural Profession,”, Varnelis shows how this is not a recent trend, but rather that the architect practice changed and less dealt with that.

“Over the last decade, “research studios” have become common in schools of architecture. Investigating clothing, logistics networks, favelas, malls, airports and cities worldwide, such studios invoke analysis rather than design as their method and aim for publication or exhibition as end products. But as is often the case in architectural education, this pedagogical model has thus far has been little theorized.
(…)
Research in these kind of studios is architectural in so far as it draws on the processes of information gathering, analysis, and synthesis that an architect undertakes in the early phases of design, utilizing the architect’s skills in structuring visual and verbal communication into a coherent whole.“

It’s also very interesting to see what sorts of agenda Kazy delineates:

“This, then, is the question that research studios need to address, indeed it is a broader litmus test for architecture|be it post-critical, critical, or otherwise|how does it help us to re-envision the world anew? By this I do not just mean add to the existing condition, either through replication of data, through nonlinear geometries, or exotic materials and structures, but rather through a contribution to knowledge. By its nature, this suggests that we should not go with the flow but rather redirect it utterly, remaking the terrain through which flows travel.“

Why do I blog this? Coming from the research side, working in an architecture lab, I am of course very into “systematic process of investigation into the city” but I am wondering as well about how to contribute to architecture. What I found very interesting is the idea of a “research studio”, which (at least from the research POV) is a boundary object (between research and architecture). And I definitely find this pertinent, also in terms of methods, goals and explorations.