Democratic Play : crowd-sourcing through games for architectural design

Abstract

This thesis presents a system that uses games. It allows people to participate in the process of designing an architectural space. The site for the design project of this experimental methodology is a courtyard on MIT campus. The games are initially prepared by the architect through sampling various objects, materials, lighting, and figures from different media such as photogrammetric models around the building site and other relevant 3D modeling/animation contents. The goal of this design system is to collage those components into a final architectural form through a democratic process. The games are distributed to students, faculty and staff who will be the users of the space being designed. Through playing these games, they provide preference about the architectural program and various design decisions regarding formal composition, details, and finishes. This crowd-sourcing occurs both implicitly and explicitly while the game is being played, and the collected feed-back informs the architect about design development. This thesis questions the role of the architects in a democratic process of design: Are we the designer of the space, or creator of a system that controls the design process?