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Architecture is often used as a vehicle to virtualize new realities, proposing radically new paradigms that nonetheless only ever offer superficial derivations from the mean. To escape this trap of typical design, a new methodology predicated on play as a central action to architecture offers more disruptive ways to virtualize those realities which truly are radically new.
Recognizing this central concept, Henri LeFebvre initially posited that architecture could not be transformed through the architect integrating play into their designs; instead, it was both the duty and right of the public to take charge of this process. Collective action was the main tool to achieve his goal, reimagining the urban fabric not through the eyes of the architect, planner, or bureaucrat, but through the populous as they dictate the creation of a new social milieu. It is easy to follow Lefebvre’s utopian thinking that the masses must take matters of creation into their own hands, but how would people used to only one paradigm or milieu be able to radically alter it?
The response to LeFebvre’s Le Droit a la Ville, and a continuous legacy of his critique, would be the consideration that the action of play would be the main vehicle in which to inspire changes and new paradigms. Whereas Lefebvre himself argued for public space to be open to spontaneous appropriation, the later Situationist International called for a “unitary urbanism” that could be creatively manipulated by the playful homo ludens. However, both LeFebvre and the Situationist’s bases of appropriation and play were equally flawed. Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon and Yona Friedman’s Spatial City, both inspired by LeFebvre, imagined play not as a means of virtualizing the world, but rather as the unilateral basis of the worlds that they envisioned. In so doing, they transformed the desire to realize the right to play into an obligation to do so, resulting in a totalitarian vision that ignored the complementary needs identified by Lefebvre. Meanwhile, the playful architects of Cedric Price and the Archigram group proposed more moderate kinds of play in architectural spaces, but in turn changed play from a transformational action into an action of choice: picking one of a handful pre-built modalities to interact with.
The dramatic shift of play’s intersection with architecture was a product of its time: postwar economic booms turned choosing into a much grander political action, one that weakened with time and worsening economic conditions. Nowadays, the “freedom to choose” is lent less agency and its political impacts fall flat, especially compared to the political power afforded to the Homo ludens. In the wake of the Internet’s disruption in the modern age, and the expectation of bottoms-up “content creation,” the “freedom of expression” has become a more powerful political action, as well as more in-line with the critiques brought up by both LeFebvre and the Situationists. Consequently, for an architecture of play to be meaningful to contemporary society, it must acknowledge individuals as creative, and it must provide a means for them to express that creativity. It must afford opportunities for individuals to imagine change and afford the means to virtualize that change. In addition, it must do so in a manner that preserves the political power of such creativity.
Thomas Henricks distinguishes between two different political levels of play. Playing in culture, for Henricks, is a form of play that does not challenge social id eas or premises, while playing at culture is a form of play that virtualizes new social realities. The choice-based playful architecture of the 1960s demonstrated the former condition, and this explains its relative political impotence. For an architecture of play to be politically meaningful, it must play at culture. Its ability to do so is articulated by philosopher Eugen Fink, who notes that play’s ability to virtualize new realities can be enacted so as to transform the most fundamental premises of society.
This thesis will therefore demonstrate an Architectura ludens—one that avoids both the political impotence of the playing in culture, as well as the political totalitarianism of the cultural obligation of unrelenting play, that characterized the various canonical postwar architectures of play. Instead, it will afford a setting within which playing at culture can be enacted. Through strategies of redefinition, co-authorship, excess, and negotiation, an urban tower in San Francisco will seek to pioneer this Architectura ludens and propose a new methodology in which peoples can play at culture and virtualize new, grassroots-driven realities.
right here in san francisco, actually. halfway between salesforce and yerba buena parks.
a nondescript building hides a plethora of realities to explore; its controlled facade creates interactions between the occupants and public.
Floors are no longer static; they shift and evolve with time. Individuals must acknowledge each other's spatial presence, as each move ripples across the whole floor.
The addition of certain static "nodes" give new affordances and actions to gather around; however, their attractiveness means that no one permutation can be permanent, as others will hope to appropriate the node themselves.
thesis statement + other thoughts
nathan jackson
pluralities of realities
the tennis court is prepared for a match
the same court, now an inpromptu workspace
a quaint library takes center stage
before noise and food move in
participants are able to choose how any space is used and interpreted. given (relative) complete freedom over their environs, occupants are able to challenge traditional spatial hierarchies and associations, but simultaneously respect the wishes of their fellow inhabitants. when architectural norms are broken, new ways of living can be discovered.
how do our expectations of, and relations to, space change? does public become private, and vice versa? how comfortable is one appropriating an important space for their own, personal usage? these sorts of questions must be asked by occupants.
this enables opportunities to play at culture and our expectations of how spaces function on their own, and relative to each other.
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the "action box," or; vehicle of play
instead of being centered around program, spaces are now determined by the actions within. "resting" can happen in a home or a public bench; "working" occurs within nearly every kind of space, etc. etc.
Through various materialities, densities, affordances, and atmospheres, occupants must create the space they wish to use.
Their limited supply means that people must interact with one another, find ways in which they can cohabitate. What new combinations are created? What new ways of living are discovered?
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play made (literally) physical
detail drawings of the action boxes & sliding walls
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