Bajo la “Dirección” Videojuegos y Formación Arquitectónica
AVANCA | CINEMA
International Conference Cinema - Art, Technology, Communication.

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of videogames in architectural education. More specifically, it discusses aspects of videogame theories, methodologies and practices as communicative academic tool and describes examples of incorporating this multimodal application in architectural education and research. Videogames are regarded as an exceptional, fully potential audiovisual medium, which is strongly related to cinematic language – therefore to a communicative multidimensional stream. They are considered as a kind of filmic space accompanied by a narrative with interactivity possibilities. A series of observations of the phenomenon of videogames are collected, and juxtaposed to spatiality issues – all seen from a designer’s as well as a player’s point of view. The technologically mediated world of videogames is deeply correspondent with the computer-aided-designed world of architecture - while in the process of conception or early growth of an architectural idea, or even in the evaluation of finalized or existing environments. Both videogames and architectural practice offer the possibility or reconstructing views, conditions and collective experiences of either existent or non-existent places. The paper presents this relationship through differentiated academic practices. These practices include former examples of audiovisual projects based on the fundamental videogame element of the ‘direction’, presentation of a research program entitled “The urban landscape in videogames; representations and spatial narratives”, with multiple emergent issues on their spatiality and audiovisual qualities, as well as prospective educational concepts aspiring to integrate the totality of the aforementioned observations with the internal process of learning and creating in an architectural school.