As part of the SUBOTRON arcademy series of lectures on the theory of computer games, Andri Gerber (Professor for Urban History at ZHAW and private lecturer at ETH, Zürich) will speak about games as performative theory of architecture and urban design using the example of a social distancing game.

Teaching and researching on the history and theory of architecture and urban design is traditionally done through text and images but can be quite boring. Andri Gerber started introducing game theory in a series of seminars for architectural students at ZHAW in Winterthur and realized that while there is a long tradition of serious and video games in teaching – history for example – while architecture and urban design are still rather unexplored. While buildings and landscapes are omnipresent in games, there is not much reflection on their relationship to “real“ buildings and urban spaces. In spring 2020, he received a grant from ZHAW digital to develop a Covid-19 game.

“Dichtestress” addresses social distancing rules but at the same time also the fact that density in urban spaces is not bad per se. The player is sick and has to avoid NPCs. Andri gathered a group of architectural students used to create virtual environments designing levels and a student from ZHdK for the code. Among other learnings, the team underestimated the process of publishing which took almost as much time as the design.
The game represents Andri’s understanding of the relationship of virtual and actual architecture and a new form of performative theory and history. Virtual architecture and urban spaces are understood and perceived “by use and by perception” to quote Walter Benjamin, something real architecture and urban spaces often are not.

Biography

Andri Gerber (*1974) is an architecture and urban design theoretician and urban metaphorologist. He earned his MSc in Architecture as well as his PhD (awarded with an ETH medal) and his habilitation from the ETH Zurich. He is a professor for Urban History at the ZHAW and a private lecturer at the ETH. His current research and publications focus on matters relating to spatial perception from a cognitive perspective, and on the potential of board and video games in architecture and urban design. Among his recent publications are Architectonics of game spaces (with Ulrich Götz (transcript 2019), Training spatial abilites (Birkhäuser 2019) and a Covid-19 themed videogame, “Dichtestress”.

Participate

Zoom-Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87531721247
Password: nostress21

The lecture series SUBOTRON arcademy is supported by the Vienna Business Agency.

The talk will be held in English / Der Talk wird auf Englisch abgehalten.
No registration required / Für die Teilnahme ist keine Anmeldung erforderlich.

Image © Andri Gerber – Dichtestress