The other day I had dinner at a radio-station that was turned into a restaurant. My favorite events venue in Amsterdam used to be a printing press. And friends of mine are turning a massive sports hall into creative work spaces. The uses buildings were intended for, and what they’re actually used for, vary greatly. I’ve been interested in that process for a long time, initially as a metaphor for adaptation of software by its users, and now as an interesting thing in itself.
Image no longer available: “REM eiland”, photo by arnebolt on Flickr.
Photo of REM Eiland (cc) Arne Bolt.
I wonder in what ways this process can be understood as play.
Jane Jacobs writes about this at length in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, pointing out for instance that a city needs old buildings, because they provide low-risk platforms for entrepreneurs:
“Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” (p.188)
And Stewart Brand’s How Building’s Learn is about this to a large extent. At one he wonders why it seems that old buildings seem to provide more freedom for creative interpretation than new ones do. Here, parallels with play and games start to emerge. On page 105 he writes:
“They free you by constraining you.”
Which is exactly what games do. The artificial constraints are there to allow you to experience a degree of freedom.
So Richard Florida’s creative class can be understood as gamers looking for an interesting play arena. This arena, it is clear, consists at least in part of cheap, easily adaptable housing. And through their play these buildings are transformed.
In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman consider the transformative qualities of play at length:
“Sometimes the cultural rhetorics of a game can change the cultural structures in which they exist. This is the phenomenon of transformative cultural play.” (p.534)
It is this dynamic people run up against when seriously attempting to change something about how old buildings are used. Particularly, in the local context of the Netherlands, when it comes to temporary use of empty buildings.
At the Cognitive Cities Salon in Amsterdam on June 30 of this year, James Burke presented his concept for social software that allows you to search for and immediately book empty space in the city of Amsterdam. He calls it Placebook, if I recall correctly. At the event, James pointed out that what would probably be the largest challenge would be the legalities involved.
Photo of Vacant NL (cc) Yellow Book.
Placebook was at least partly inspired by the wonderful Rietveld Landscape project Vacant NL. It consists of a huge 3D mockup of all the empty buildings in the Netherlands — a blue “sea of vacancy” — and is accompanied by an atlas detailing all structures it encompasses. The project, which was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, can be seen as a challenge by Rietveld Landscape to Dutch politics which has talked about wanting to make our country one of the top creative economies of the world at length, but at the same time have allowed vast quantities of space, that could be used by the creatives, to sit empty and unused.
How the current political climate will affect the chances of new architectural playgrounds for creatives actually emerging is to be seen. But it is clear to me at least that people, when given the opportunity, can do wonderful interesting things with old buildings, and that these things benefit cities at larger orders of magnitude much more than they cost.
In the meantime, I will continue to consider how game designers can hasten change in this domain.
Things we’re working on (volume 3)
Four months have passed since the previous update on our projects so it’s about time for a new one.
Curating a playful exhibition
The lovely folk at Storm have asked me to return as curator of the playful-slash-interactive exhibition that will be part of youth theatre festival Tweetakt 2012. I did the one this year, had fun, learned a lot too and we got some nice responses so I’m keen to have at it again. It’s early stages so I am mostly making lists of interesting work that has caught my eye over the past year. The next step will be to filter it and try to come up with a cohesive selection. Some patterns I’ve spotted thus far are tentatively titled Robots and Making. We’ll see how those develop.
Publishing on Code 4
You may have noticed a new project writeup in the portfolio about Code 4 (previously referred to as Maguro). We’ve talked about it at Chi Sparks and Think Design Play and are now in the process of producing a short video that’ll hopefully give you a better feel for the player experience. One of the challenges of working with pervasive games is that a lot of the action happens off the screen and so there are few artifacts that we can use to show the game. The game is in fact a performance that needs to be registered, so that is what we’re doing now. I’m working with the great Hein Lagerweij on this one who I first collaborated with for the Buta videosketch. Speaking of which…
Publishing on Buta
We screened a sneak preview of the Buta videosketch at Think Design Play and I think it’s safe to say we raised a few eyebrows. It was interesting presenting work at an academic conference where most of what was presented were articles. I got the sense some attendees weren’t as accustomed to responding to stuff as they are to discussing ideas. On the upside, I noticed lots of comments and questions that were exactly the kinds of considerations we want to stir with this video. I am going to ask for a bit more patience on your side and promise you’ll get to watch the video yourself soon.
Art van Triest and Hein Lagerweij at the Vechtclub
Making a game that teaches astronomy
Finally, there’s Iruka, which is the main project happening in the studio at the moment. It’s me and Karel Millenaar (game design heavyweight) working with Noordhoff Publishers (producers of teaching materials for all levels of education) and the Amstelveen College (a secondary school) to explore the opportunities games and play provide in the classroom. Specifically, we’re looking at novel teaching methods for the ‘general natural sciences’ course which is mandatory for all fourth-year students in VWO. This course covers a lot of subjects, but we’re building a pilot around astronomy. That’s right, we’re exploring space! We’ve come to the point where a concept has been approved and we can start to work out the details and build a prototype. Playtesting will happen in the classroom throughout the rest of this year and hopefully, come january, we’ll have something to share with you.
Anyway, that’s it from me for now. As always, if any of this peaks your interest, don’t be shy and drop a note below.