Videogame Urbanism 2017-18
Playing the Metropolis of Tomorrow
This year we interrogated the relationship between speculative representations of cities and the rules by which they grow. Our research began by making games revisiting experimental urban projects of the past, from Superstudio’s Continuous Monument to Lloyd-Wright’s Broadacre City and Soleri’s Arcologies. We created a compendium of games that reconstructed these seminal projects as inhabitable and playable virtual spaces.
Following our fieldtrip to New York and NYU Game Center, students developed more complex games interrogating the morphology and systems of the city. We made games where players could participate in the historical development of Manhattan’s grid system, cutting and grading the island before paving out its famous streets. In another, rhythmic gestures from the player construct spiralling skyscrapers in progressively modern materials, while another project established a free-roaming city of allegorical islands inspired by the archipelago of New York.