Children’s Spaces
immersed throughout their childhood years in gaming culture. Of cource it is early days relatively speaking to fully assess this, and it will be interesting to return to this in a decade to assess how far this spatial dexterity has been carried through into the design of the new generation of buildings. However (as someone of the older generation), one can only marvel at how communicative of spatial and architectural intentions the new computer animations have become. It excites a whole range of understanding which places architecture on the same plain as art and drama, in that it can be experienced as a complex threedimensional form; its uses can be rehearsed prior to construction. Let’s try something bold. Let’s start from the assumption that games are an important form of contemporary art. What kind of art are they? Most often critics discuss games as a narrative art, as interactive cinema or participatory storytelling. But perhaps we should consider another starting point, viewing games as a spatial art with its roots in architecture, landscape painting, sculpture, gardening or amusementpark design.28 To create a sense of place, many computer games describe space as a continuum. These graphic sequences are becoming more and more sophisticated, and provide the potential for real place making in the future. In his essay The Virtual Reality of the Tea Ceremony, Michael Heim29 observes that some website designers are now trying to create a sense of continuity as a foil to the usual disconnected nature of most Internet sites. The search for wholeness, he believes, is the way in which artists will make sense of cyberspace and create more harmonious, musical places in which people may come to feel more comfortable. However, he adds that computers currently have a tendency to isolate us as individuals. Because of the instantaneous nature of these new space networks, time barriers drop and we lose a sense of distance from one another when entering cyberspace for any extended time periods. This he believes is where the danger lies; respect seems to require 176
distance and if we lose this interior distance, what he describes as ‘the vastness of our spiritual landscapes’, then we risk losing respect. Within realms of real space, digital technology has enabled the worlds of work to become fluid. Our living and working places increasingly are used in flexible ways. By changing software, the use of a place is transformed. We no longer need an office, as previously determined; today an office can be a home, or a place for leisure. Work can take place on a train or in a car. Our places are therefore more generic and may no longer need to have a predetermined identity. One of the challenges of contemporary design is to adjust to this lack of identity in a place. One of the most difficult and exciting identities we have to grapple with, and move on conceptually, is the school.
Notes 1 Eisenman, P. (1996). Visions Unfolding – Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media. In Theorising Architecture – a New Agenda for an Anthology of Architectural Theory (K. Nesbitt, ed.) p. 557, Princeton Architectural Press, New York. 2 Benton Foundation in association with the National Urban League 1968. 3 Kitchen, R. (1998). Cyberspace. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. 4 Quoted from Antipode – a Radical Journal of Geography, Vol. 34, No. 2, March 2002, Blackwell, London. 5 McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Medie: Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill. 6 In September 2003 Microsoft UK closed down all of their chat rooms as a result of concerns regarding the welfare of young people involved in this. 27 children have been raped or seriously assaulted as a result of meetings with fellow users over the past year. 7 Bakewell, J. (2003). The Centre of the Bed. p. 28. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 8 Philip French book on film. 9 Reading Digital Culture (David Trent, ed.) Oxford: Blackwells.