Future Matters

How are gaming tools impacting architectural design practice and pedagogy?

Abstract

This paper explores the integration of gaming software, specifically Unreal Engine into architectural design practice and education. It presents two case studies illustrating how these tools can be utilized to enhance architectural design processes, challenging abstract, static and service-oriented representation techniques. It argues for the importance of simulation and filmic practices as generative tools for architectural design allowing for immersive and interactive stakeholder engagement as well as public broadcasting, expanding modes of future practice. The paper advocates for the inclusion of these tools in design studio pedagogy valuing excellence in education and studio experience, environments and systems that promote future excellence.  

If ‘Simulation (…) is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.’ (Baudrillard, 1994) then we can imagine architectural drawings working as models for the construction of this ‘hyperreal’.

Drawings are the primary medium through which architects communicate their projects to clients, stakeholders, contractors or the public. Orthographic projections, models and images allow architects to describe and illustrate a design idea. Rendering outputs particularly, have taken over the marketing aspects of architectural practice for their visual immediacy amongst audiences not versed in reading abstract drawings.

Images are incredibly powerful in ‘selling’ concepts, but digital rendering tools are expensive, complex and hard to master in an already time-poor practice.  In recent years, open-source gaming engine software has emerged as a competitive alternative for architects to not only render still images but also to evaluate real-time design proposals in an immersive and highly accurate virtual environment.

The research outlines two case studies illustrating the utilization of Unreal Engine 5 in architectural practice as well as in design studio pedagogy, arguing for the multifaceted ways in which these instruments allow for novel ways to simulate, evaluate and present design ideas to a broader audience.

Through the Swan Hill Visitor Centre Project designed by Common, a first case study illustrates how the software allows precise design decisions pertaining to contextual information, materiality, light and spatial user experience. As a real-time design evaluation tool with fast rendering processing and vast amounts of embedded plugins and assets, it provides practitioners with valuable ways to assess design iteration and development in real-time.

A second case study describing a Masters Design Studio pedagogy at the Melbourne School of Design in 2024 (Future  Matters Studio D) illustrates how the software allows students to speculate on urban future challenges through a design fiction lens. Architectural design has ‘always been capable of con­structing fantasy and science fiction imagery, foreshadowing the future’ (Sambo, 2024) as illustrated in the works of Liam Young, Lebbeus Woods or Ian Cheng. As such, a filmic tool such as this could provide a novel way to engage with future design practice, expanding the scope of design impact.

The above was exemplified through a series of images, video and user experience photographs to illustrate the effectiveness of the software, with a final reflection on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting these tools within established design studio models, while meeting intended learning outcomes.

The research concludes with a positive appraisal of the incorporation of tools like Unreal Engine 5 as design enablers, rather than design visualizers, highlighting how simulation and immersion technologies can foster new ways of thinking, communicating and designing for practitioners and for students.  

References

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation (S. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press. https://press.umich.edu/Books/S/Simulacra-and-Simulation

Candy, S. & Young, L. (2019). I design worlds, Journal of Future Studies’ 23(3), 113-118. https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/10-Young-I-Design-Worlds.pdf

Cheng, I. (2018). Emissaries Guide to Worlding. Koenig Books.

DUNNE, A., & RABY, F. (2013). BEYOND RADICAL DESIGN? In Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (pp. 1–10). The MIT Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qf7j7.5

Sambo, M. M. (2024). Introduction. AR Magazine: From drawing to the metaverse/ Imagined architecture, scripts, artificial languages,  129/130. https://www.architettiroma.it/armag/

Young, L. (2020). Planet City. Uro Publications.