Video Game and Rule-based, interactive architecture

Figure 46 Negotiation between two users to define their limits in Wego Project

The initial experiment was built on a quarrel between only two users, with no way to negotiate and no other

option except to rely on their egos until they reached a win-win solution. Another experiment was carried

out in Chicago, where the architectural outcomes were ignored in favor of creating a sociological interface

that depicted how consumers generate their wish lists. In this example, negotiation yielded unexpected

results. Therefore, multiple configurations may be formed based on the rules given to each video game

model and the modalities of interaction.

With the advent of technology and the use of MMPOG, city games have shifted in recent years to game

engines that provide very realistic 2d and 3d visuals representations of architectural or urban

environments, as well as data-driven software simulations in real time. According to Tan (2019), video

game technique offers real-time feedback by various participants by providing the possibility to grasp

urban complicated datasets through various data processing and simulation. This may be accomplished

by not just collecting the various actors face to face, but also by engaging online communities. Indeed,

online communities that engage and collaborate in real time, much like MMPOG, may play an important

role in the design, testing, and reshaping architecture and the urban environment.

Video Game and Rule-based, interactive architecture

In architecture, game design technologies are seen as instruments for creating environments that can be

used not just as playful spaces, but also as architecture virtual spaces that can be displayed to customers

or walked through by virtual visitors and interact with. With the advancement of internet speed,

architecture is becoming quickly transformable in real time. Video game elements can be found in

architecture in a multitude of ways:

1. As approaches for delivering an updated supply of digital technology, computational, and rule-

based design during the architectural design process (playing architecture, conceptual 80

approach). In games with a first-person view, the player to act and react in a 3D virtual

environment based on certain rules. In virtual reality, the architect can design, create, and

generate a variety of reactive spaces that are predictable or unpredictable; architecture can also design the paradigm of interactivity. Interactive architecture/rule-based architecture/programmable architecture/ Interactive architecture.

2. During the design process, as a simulation method. To walkthrough architectural models and visualize them. Realistic, utopian, and dystopian building representations/narratives can all be

supported in games. Games can feature activities and transactions that are analogous to those

found in the real world.

3. To make the architectural design process more gamified. Architecture with a sense of fun.

Kas Oosterhuis (2006), an experimental and innovative architect who trained at TU Delft, describes

architecture as “a complex and dynamic system with movable parts” which are driven by a gaming

programming language. He proposes a rule-based, parametrically built architecture capable of changing

in real time in reaction to external behaviors and adapting to changing situations at the same time. In

this view, he defined architecture as a media akin to a video game that responds to programmable rules

with artificial intelligence, due to evolving technologies and based on how players and protagonists

move around the game space. Based on these considerations, in the 2000’s he builds an installation named Trans-ports at the Architecture Biennale in Venice, in which visitors by moving around activate

sensors that bring signals to games running in computers. Signals correspond to game action and they

contribute in the change of the geometry of the environment and on the insertion of other visual effects

visible on the screen.

Oosterhuis together with his research group “Hyperbody Research Group” in Delft, researched on a

proactive architecture and on its degree of adaptation and stimulation by using a game design tools. In

particular, Oostehuis was interested in the possibility that game engines offer to create new alive,

interactive and manipulative worlds.

“Architecture becomes a game being played by its users,” who set the parameters of the built environment (Oosterhuis 2006, p.3.)

In addition, Oosterhuis and Jaskiewicz (2007) at Game Set and Match conference in 2007, proposed a

“multiplayer design” approach in architecture, considering the possibility to enable the exploration of the architecture design process from different perspectives, not only considering the single-player

perspective.

Figure 47 Trans-ports installation for interactive architecture, in Architecture Biennale in Venice, Kas Oosterhuis, 2000

“Designing architecture is serious play. It is a game whose goal is to create a great building. It is a

game designer’s need to play according to the rules of physics, economy, and society. It is by

nature a multiplayer game in which many specialists need to work together to increase their prospects to win” (Oosterhuis and Jaskiewicz 2007, p. 358).

Oosterhuis has pointed out the continuous and progressive gamification of architecture, by the use of

game design tools ( Oosterhuis, Feireiss, 2006) and claimed the disappearing of substance form in favour

an information flow as the primary material of this new architecture. The solid body of architecture

becomes a “hyperbody”, able to be transformed in real time by exchanging information with the

surrounding context. Moreover, Marcos Novac introduced the concept of “neuroarchitecture” envisioning and architecture not made of solid material and not responsive to the laws of gravity, but

made of “intelligent, plastic nanomaterials, keeping the central nervous system of the building informed” (Markussen, 2005) and able to sense outer inputs and respond to them. In the age of information

technology, Novac believes that architecture does not exist only in the physical form but is inevitably the

product of technology and therefore is under a liquid form which is in continuous change and

transformation and can be accessible and manipulated by all. Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture

studio pointed out the features of this new liquid architecture.

“Objects, spaces, buildings, and institutions can now be constructed, navigated, comprehended,

experienced, and manipulated across a global network. This is the new architecture of liquidity,

flux, and mutability predicated on technological advances and fueled by a basic human desire to

probe the unknown” (Chang, 2000).

The spatial configuration as in video game is in continuous motion using digital technology. In 1997

Oosterhuis invented and build Saltwaterpavilion, an interactive architecture that depend on the

changing the environment conditions. Users experience a changing environment but was also able to