Co-Authoring Beyond the Human: Disordering Architectural Processes through Play and Multi-Agent Co-Existence

Abstract

This thesis reconsiders architectural authorship and the extended processes through which the built environment is shaped, using a series of playful, participatory interventions to expose the human-centric assumptions embedded in spatial decision-making. Presented as a collection of games and booklets, the work invites participants to engage with a wide spectrum of architectural processes—from site understanding and planning to permitting, construction, and post-occupancy—through the perspectives of multiple agents entangled in shared environments. These agents include beings, materials, living organisms, legal frameworks, and other forces typically excluded from spatial authorship, challenging conventional boundaries and expanding the discourse around the entangled forces and relations that shape the spaces we inhabit. A series of playful explorations opens space for friction, misalignment, and shared authorship. Each booklet engages a distinct stage of the architectural process through participatory formats that make visible the biases, exclusions, and regulatory fictions often treated as neutral. By gamifying these systems, the work reveals how architectural decision-making tends to privilege hierarchy, human control, and speed—often at the expense of multispecies co-existence. This thesis positions play as a critical lens: a way to rehearse alternative futures, to listen differently, to embody other perspectives, and to surface the black-box logics embedded in architectural norms. It invites readers and players to participate in unbuilding these assumptions. And the games evolve—with each use, each misreading, each encounter, and each agent who joins the conversation.