Tag Archives: Architecture

Book, book chapter, , , , , , , ,

I’m looking forward to this book, I’m interviewed for a section in it and the rest of the content is interesting!

Champion, E., & Estrina, T. (2025: in press). On his roles as Professor and Research Fellow- Erik Champion. In V. Hui, R. Scavnicky, & T. Estrina (Eds.), Architecture and Videogames Intersecting Worlds. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Architecture-and-Videogames-Intersecting-Worlds/Hui-Scavnicky-Estrina/p/book/9781032528854

“The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.””This book explores and affirms the emergent symbiosis between video games and architecture, including insights from a diverse range of disciplines.

With contributions from authorities in both architecture and videogame industries, it examines how videogames as a medium have enlightened the public about the built environments of the past, offered heightened awareness of our current urban context, and presented inspiration and direction for the future directions of architecture. A relatively nascent medium, videogames have rapidly transitioned from cultural novelty to architectural prophet over the past 50 years. That videogames serve as an interactive proxy for the real world is merely a gateway into just how pervasive and potent the medium is in architectural praxis. If architecture is a synthesis of cultural value and videogames are a dominant cultural medium of today, how will they influence the architecture of tomorrow? Heavily illustrated with over 200 images, the book is split into seven sections: Cultural Artifacts, Historic Reproduction, Production Technologies, Design Pedagogy, Proxies and Representation, Bridging Worlds, and Projected Futures.

The definitive resource on consolidating these interconnected fields, this book will mobilize the current generation of designers to explore and advance this synthesis.”

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or A Stab in the Dark?

Academic, Announcements, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, Virtual travel, , , , , , , , ,

The book contract is signed, the chapter authors are completing their chapters, and we have a book cover image from Ubisoft (not this one, this is a screenshot from AC Origins Discovery Tour), I just need to update my own chapter and references.

Assassin’s Creed in the Classroom: History’s Playground or A Stab in the Dark?

Editors: Erik Champion, Juan Hiriart

Publisher: De Gruyter, Video Games and the Humanities series

Section 1: History Through Play

  • Historical Video Games and Teaching Practices,  Marc-André Éthier, David Lefrancois
  • Discovery Tour Curriculum Guides To Improve Teachers’ Adoption of Serious Gaming, Chu Xu, Robin Sharma, Adam K. Dubé
  • Christian Vikings storming Templar Castles: Anachronism as a Teaching Tool, Ylva Grufstedt, Robert Houghton
  • Ludoforming The Past: Mediation Of Play And Mediation Of History Through Videogame Design, Julien Bazil

Section 2: Cultural History, Tours And Tourism

  • Studying Greek Culture Through Historical Characters In Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Nathan Looije
  • Empathy and Historical Learning in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Discovery Tour, Juan Hiriart
  • Ubisoft’s Ancient Greece Discovery Tour as a Pedagogical Tool for a School Trip, Kevin Péloquin, Marc-André Éthier
  • Discovering The Past As A Virtual Foreign Country: Assassin’s Creed As Historical Tourism, Angela Schwarz

Section 3: Narration, Creation, and Exhibition

  • Classical Creations in a Modern Medium: Using Story Creator Mode in a University Assignment, Hamish Cameron
  • Assassin’s Creed @ the Carlos: Merging Videogames and Education in the Gallery, Kira Jones
  • From the Sketchbook to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: An Experiment in Architectural Education, Manuel Sanchez Garcia,  Rafael de Lacour
  • Assassin’s Creed As Immersive and Interactive Architectural History, Erik Champion

paperback of ‘Organic Design in 20th C Nordic Architecture’ Book

Announcements, Architecture, Book, heritage, , , , , , ,

Arrived last week, I think the paperback version may be nicer to hold and read than the hardcover version! Definitely cheaper.. available in Australia or internationally.

Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture presents a communicable and useful definition of organic architecture that reaches beyond constraints. The book focuses on the works and writings of architects in Nordic countries, such as Sigurd Lewerentz, Jørn Utzon, Sverre Fehn and the Aaltos (Aino, Elissa and Alvar), among others. It is structured around the ideas of organic design principles that influenced them and allowed their work to evolve from one building to another. Erik Champion argues organic architecture can be viewed as a concerted attempt to thematically unify the built environment through the allegorical expression of ongoing interaction between designer, architectural brief and building-as-process. With over 140 black and white images, this book is an intriguing read for architecture students and professionals alike.

Notes: paucity of architectural theory in virtual place design

Architecture, Virtual Reality, ,

Learning from essentialism in architecture:

Essentialist Polemics in Architectural History, 2006:

…major architectural theories are fundamentally representational, and can be summarized as theories of semiotics, empathic projection, material symbolism (as tectonic glorification, or territorial protectionism), or as reflections of a community (and the related notion of archaeological structuration). This paper will argue that even if there are particular features of architectural design not shared by other related disciplines, that the above major theories, (as well as non-representational formalist theory), are all open to an accusation of impoverished essentialism…I suggest the followingargument: that with one notable exception, major architectural theories are fundamentally re-presentational. These theories can be summarizedas theories of semiotics, empathic projection, ma-terial symbolism (as tectonic glorification, or territo-rial protectionism), or as reflections of a community(and the related notion of archaeological structu-ration).The above classification of these theories is to high-light problems common to architectural aesthetics

One does not have to be essentialist about essentialist theories in architecture, one can mix match and modulate

These theories avoid discussing architecture intertwined with a sense of place, they concentrate on representation and form (see Wittgenstein, Family Resemblance argument).

19thC architectural theory started addressing changes in style and the role of empathy but was overtaken by industrialization, painting and sculpture and light-weight furniture, industrial, portable, stackable.

(Mention in passing the advantages and disadvantages of Horta, and Gaudi).

When you consider all the aspects of building buildings and how so many other disciplines are involved, it is still hard to extract the relationship and inter-relationship of architecture as building meaningful places and inter-places.

Architecture also pioneered the use of transition spaces, interstitial places, and objects that created transitional viewing and acting spaces/translucent and perforated visual barriers and so on (mention here Villa Mairea, Asplund’s diaphanous work inspired by Strindberg’s set design in A Ghost Play.., the transitional wall in Utzon’s housing estates)

Virtual places typically lack transitional spaces, breathing areas, the diaphanous, the moulded, in brief, the interplaces. They concentrate on form, colour, light.

Experiencing the Experience of the Past

digital heritage, virtual heritage, ,

Experiencing the Experience of the Past and

Experiencing Exhibition Portals of the Future from the Past.

[Notes on a potential future article of speculative/manifesto-oriented content, but where it fits with journals or conferences, I do not know].

Keywords: Experience, heritage, 3D models, experience of experience, Heidegger

In creating virtual heritage models and sites there is a typically recurring problem seldom discussed. In the midst of so many technical, conceptual and social problems I wish to highlight one of the most difficult, the experiencing of experiences.

Charters into digital heritage usually relate back to UNESCO’s concepts of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. And UNESCO’s concepts are predicated on the notion of communicating (local, past) cultural significance of the site: what was valuable and significant about it and how do we communicates its values?

Conversely, exhibition architecture celebrates the new, the inspiring, they act as gateway to a visionary future. How do we preserve communicate or re-establish their function and impact, as portals between past and future? They are generally forgotten and dismantled. But the experience of encountering them is never fully recorded, transmitted or preserved.

For Heidegger, the work of art (say, a Greek temple), does not just sit there, it provides a perceptual threshold through which the perceiver can suddenly encounter the shadow-furrowed outline of their past silhouetted against the blinding light of their future.

The power of the sudden vista is such that the very material of the temple (be it marble or some other shiny material) “causes it to come forth for the very first time” [PLT 46]. That is, on the edge of the bringing-forth of the work of art, one is carried away by the impression that the moment is unique: that the work is appearing before one in a way that will never quite be “caught” again.

Such an opening is not an object that is unrelated to the perceiver’s self-guided interests (as one might view the situation in terms of a Kantian disinterestedness), it is the revealing of those very same to all past theories of art and aesthetics. And in the very act of creating this realm, Heidegger claims that it might be significantly more tempting and worthwhile to the perceiver than even the phenomenal world that actually (tangibly) lies before them:

“Towering up within itself, the work opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force…The world worlds, and is more fully in being than the tangible and perceptual realm in which we believe ourselves to be at home.” [PLT 44-45]

Can we recapture this? The problem, in other words, is how to communicate the experience, historically situated, in how people then experienced what was then fresh, new, revolutionary.

There are paintings, news clippings, sometimes audio interviews. But nothing together in an experiential gestalt that helps communicate what was new to them. Presence research does not help, it aims for a universal not situated measure of presence and immersivity. My concept of cultural presence also does not go very far, it may only apply to certain sites, and…

Do 3D models help? No, they are limited in terms of backstory, paradata (context), not experientially rich, lacking in interactivity and agency (not the same thing), no multimodality or gestalt framework (for reasons I will elaborate), and seldom have feedback. Here I will explain why the most basic elements of games, theme (fantasy, imagination), challenge (engaging difficulty), optional strategies that help develop intrinsic game-related growth and change…

But museums? Museums don’t have the time to enable the above! Well, they don’t have the freedom to allow users to develop the above (references to follow). Growth, deep understanding, all take time and reflection. The monumental, forgotten impact of old museums is disappearing…

There are examples in architecture (embodiment: Kathadaw Pagoda, caryatids; expression: Colosseum; innovation: Duomo of Florence, Hagia Sophia, Pantheon; sensory overload and uniqueness: Crystal Palace).

SO how can we relay and transmit the above?

  1. Biofeedback
  2. Paradata trails
  3. Backstory (incorporate witness and expert interviews)
  4. Historical mementos from different eras recapturing the apparent newness of the event
  5. Shareable experience indicators

References

Charitos, D. (1996). “Definining Existential Space in Virtual Environments”, Proc. Virtual Reality World 96, (Stuttgart: IDG Publications).

Heidegger, Martin, (translated by Albert Hofstadter), Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper and Row, New York 1975 [PLT]

ICOMOS, (1999).‘The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS charter for the conservation of places of cultural significance’, http://www.icomos.org/australia/burracharter.html.

Nitsche, Michael. 2008, Video Game Spaces Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Game Worlds, MIT Press, USA.

Rough Outline on Architected Place

Academic, Book, Conference, design, virtual heritage, Virtual Reality, ,

I am finishing a chapter (Chapter 3: ‘Architected’ Places) for my own book on Virtual Places, but the structural arc has escaped me until now. It will be polemical and controversial so I need to rewrite it to show that I realize this, there will be gaps and generalizations.

The basic premises are:

  1. Architectural theory is essentialist.
  2. Architectural tools are instrumentalist, architects don’t work on or near the site, as they need specialist tools connected to databases not to experiences.
  3. Architectural media is loath to include people and architectural spaces don’t work as places without people (Marseilles, by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, architectural masterpieces tend to be pavilions).
  4. Architects are not trained in user experience design and evaluation.
  5. Nor are architects trained in interactive media, their tools (see argument 2) are instrumentalist and passive.
  6. Traditional architectural craft is embodied, sited, takes time and records care. This is less and less the case.
  7. So applying theories of architecture, or practices of architectural design to interactive digital media in order to create virtual places, may well leave some gaps. How to resolve these in the design of virtual places? Corruption? Fancy theory? Post modernism? No, through embodiment, multimodality, role-play (and thematic affordances), allowing user-infill, environmental change to affect the design environment, and digital personalized patinas, materials that show the effect of time, wear and care.

 

CFP: 30th eCAADe 2012, Prague – 2nd CfP

Architecture, Conference, design, , , , ,

30th eCAADe Conference September 12 — 14, 2012
Czech Technical University in Prague Faculty of Architecture Prague, Czech Republic
ecaade2012
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=282249788460217
http://www.ecaade.org
DIGITAL PHYSICALITY | PHYSICAL DIGITALITY SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

Digitality is the condition of living in a world where ubiquitous information and communication technology is embedded in the physical world. Although it is possible to point out what is “digital” and what is “real,” the distinction has become pointless, and it has no more explanatory power for our environment, buildings, and behaviour. Material objects are invested with communication means, teams are communicating even when not together, and buildings can sense and respond to the environment, each other, and to inhabitants.

Digital is no longer an add-on, extra, or separate software. Reality is partly digital and partly physical. The implication of this condition is not clear however, and we need to investigate its potential. We have to search for new strategies that acknowledge the synergetic qualities of the physical and the digital. This is not limited to artifacts or what we design, but it also influences the process, methods, and what or how we teach. For the conference therefore, we are looking for contributions that explore this synergy.

Authors are encouraged to submit their work on the conference theme.

Subjects may be, but are not limited to: CAAD curriculum. Modes of production. New design concepts and strategies. Mass customization. Collaborative design. Digital aids to design creativity. User participation in design. Generative design. Virtual architecture. Shape studies. Virtual reality. Precedence and prototypes. Web-based design. Design tool development. Human-Computer Interaction. Simulation, prediction, and evaluation. City modelling. Digital applications in construction.

IMPORTANT DATES
Extended abstracts – – – – – – – – – – -4 February 2012
For extended abstracts, use the template on the website: http://ecaade2012.molab.eu/submission.htm
Abstracts must be uploaded via the eCAADe 2012 OpenConf website (start by the end of January).
Acceptance of papers – – – – – – – – – 26 March 2012
Submission of full papers – – – – – – -3 June 2012
Deadline early registration- – – – – – -3 June 2012
eCAADe workshops – – – – – – – – – -10-11 September 2012
eCAADe conference – – – – – – – – -12-14 September 2012
Contact email: ecaade2012@fa.cvut.cz
Conference organizers: Henri Achten and Dana Matejovska Cabinet of Architectural Modelling Faculty of Architecture Czech Technical University in Prague Czech Republic

IJAC – International Journal of Architectural Computing

Academic, Architecture, , , ,

IJAC | International Journal of Architectural Computing*
We invite authors to submit original research papers for the issue scheduled for May/June 2012, under the title

Augmented Culture**
Gabriela Celani and Eduardo Nardelli
Guest editors
Deadline January 15th, 2012

Augmented Culture talks about a combination of interdependent social and technological meanings in a complex, multiple, interactive and interconnected context. It acknowledges that a new social and cultural paradigm is being developed as the old barriers of time, space and language are ruptured and transcended. In our knowledge-based civilization, we inhabit interconnected societies where new relational forms are configured. Additionally, cultural expressions have been qualitatively augmented starting from their integration with information and communication technologies, which have dramatically enhanced not only their creative and reflective processes, but also the realization and construction of cultural objects.

In this sense, an Augmented Culture compels us to investigate the wide and complex spectrum of the variables that express the interdisciplinary, collective and participative constructions of our present age, so strongly related to visual culture, information culture and interface culture. Thus, we consider it necessary to concentrate, to expand, to spread and to share exploratory, descriptive or explanatory experiences and productions of such phenomena. The attempt is to define a multidimensional theoretical framework that while recognizing today’s state-of-the-art and tendencies, providing us with a critical viewpoint.

Authors are invited to submit complete and original papers that have not been published elsewhere and are not currently under consideration for another journal. The submissions should be full-length papers (3000 – 5000 words, maximum length 6000 words) complete with illustrations reporting original research or practice.

Papers must be submitted only by the IJAC online system at http://www.architecturalcomputing.org/review/author/submit.php Please type “Augmented Culture” in the “Optional Comments” box in the form.

More information about IJAC can be seen at: http://www.architecturalcomputing.org/jour/about.html
Detailed instructions for authors can be seen at http://www.multi-science.co.uk/gen_authors.htm
A template can be downloaded from: http://www.architecturalcomputing.org/downloads/IJAC_paper_template09.doc

Important dates

Deadline for submitting papers: January 15th, 2012
Notification of acceptance sent to authors: March 15th, 2012 Final papers due: March 31st, 2012
Publication date: May/June 2012

ATHENS: HERITAGE AND MODERNITY

Architecture, , , ,

From January 5th to 15th, 2012

This 11 day visit of Athens focuses on the preservation and conservation issues facing the city. The program involves a series of lectures and visits lead by Athenian architects, historians, conservators and planners who have been grappling with the problem of preserving monuments and culture in the midst of a bustling modern city.

Subjects covered will include:

● History and evolution of the city

● Art and culture of the city over time

● Conservation of the major archaeological monuments

● The modern city and the archaeological areas

● Modern urban development and architecture

You can get further information on this program at http://sangeministudies.org under the Athens link. The deadline for applications is November 15, 2011.

This program is specialized and is intended for students or professionals engaged in History, Archaeology, Architecture Art History, Architecture, Urban Planning, Anthropology, Conservation and Historic Preservation. It is not intended for the general public. People with no background in these fields, or familiarity with Greek culture and history, are unsuitable applicants for this program.

If you know any students, scholars or others interested in this type of visit, please inform them about our program. We would appreciate it if you could list our program on your organization’s website as an available educational resource.

We have a flyer that you may wish to post on your department notice board or forward to interested parties. You can print this from our website at the following link: Athens flyer.

New paper on Biofeedback and Architecture to be presented at CAADRIA 2011, 27-29 April

Architecture, Conference, design, game, virtual heritage, , , ,

I just sent the final paper off to the organizers of CAADRIA 2011.
It is rather a rare paper by Andrew Dekker and myself  as it talks about atmosphere, 19th Century German empathy theory, Heidegger (indirectly), Wild Divine biofeedback and Zombies. Actually it is not really about Zombies but about how indirect biofeedback could be used for architectural visualization, social worlds and virtual places in general. I was trying to make the case for indirect biofeedback to augment the environment, and to allow enhanced information or interaction based on mastering/achieving calm, rather than on raising excitement levels. It is a step in my attempt to convey an experience of holy places and cultural sites using (indirect) biofeedback. Biofeedback has been seen as highly subjective, variable, and unreliable as a direct interaction method which is one of the reasons I am so interested it as indirect and augmenting rather than direct and dominant. Anyway, the abstract follows:

INDIRECT BIOFED ARCHITECTURE
Strategies to best utilise biofeedback tools and interaction metaphors within digital architectural environments

This paper explains potential benefits of indirect biofeed-back used within interactive virtual environments, and reflects on an earlier study that allowed for the dynamic modification of a virtual environment’s graphic shaders, music and artificial intelligence (of Non Playing Characters) based on the biofeedback of the player. It then examines both the potential and the issues in applying biofeed-back (already effective for games) to digital architectural environ-ments, and suggests potential uses such as personalization, object creation, atmospheric augmentation, filtering, and tracking.

cfp: WRITING ARCHITECTURE Brisbane 22-23 July 2010

Conference, ,

WRITING ARCHITECTURE: A SYMPOSIUM ON INNOVATIONS IN THE TEXTUAL AND VISUAL CRITIQUE OF BUILDINGS

WHEN: Thursday 22 and Friday 23 July 2010

WHERE: The State Library of Queensland and the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane, Australia

ABSTRACTS DUE APRIL 16TH

http://naomistead.com/2010/03/10/call-for-papers-for-second-writing-architecture-conference/
This Call For Papers can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Utzon has left the building

Architecture, ,

Today the Melbourne Age reported that Utzon had passed away on Saturday at the age of 90 in Denmark (I thought he had retired to Mallorca, but perhaps the tourists have taken it over)? Anyway, the article quotes Utzon on the Sydney Opera House, “together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes a living thing”. I wrote a thesis on Nordic Organic Architecture many years ago on the notion of dissolving architecture from the inside out but here is another twist on what is “organic”: the structure in moving light (the Opera house was designed to have blue tiles on its many roofs) created a living space. Ironically, today my wife pointed at a harbour city on TV and asked me if that was Auckland but when the Sydney Opera House swung into view immediately went “oh”. No wonder, Sky Tower is a direct rehash of Centrepoint, but Auckland has no Opera House and probably never will. Where is the public architecture at the edge of the world?

Utzon's Bagsvaerd Church

Bagsvaerd Church, Lygnby Denmark