7 December 2012

Memento Vita: The Final Thoughts



The project essentially started with this: an architectural detail at the Barbican. A circle cast in the concrete especially for the fire hose. Ironic how a building set for a utopian future decided to encase its technology in stone. It really made me wonder: if technology is altering the way we live, what say does it have over our architecture?

To help answer that question I looked at the industry that is pushing our spatial relationships with technology the furthest: videogames. It is an industry that has boomed through the credit crunch and moved $68 billion in 2012. There are 10 million "hardcore" gamers in the UK who with every game bring a bit of what they've learned into the real world. With dreams of headsets being left in the 90s and holodecks emerging in patents, videogames are becoming spatial not just in the virtual but in the real. The epitome can be found in the world of e-sports.

I created a video to better explain this concept. The audio and first image is accredited to Michael Highland. E-sports footage accredited to Fnatic. Animations, renders and video/sound editing made by me.




There are many concepts of game theory that I was very excited about implementing. Flow, Magic Circles, the Lusory Attitude, Emergence all weaved together into an architectural response for an event and residence space.

There are various things I have learned about architecture's relationship with technology. First of all that while technology does change our relationship with space, architecture is often too slow to keep up. We therefore cannot create architecture for future technologies, just for future human and social relationships. Architecture is about creating meaning and volumes for meaningful experiences to occur in.

-RCM