Understanding the sublime architecture of Bloodborne
The secret to understanding the Souls games is through their architecture.
Architecture
Architecture for atheists acknowledges the infinite detail of the universe
How do you build a church for an atheist? Who or what, exactly, would an atheist be looking to worship at a church made for them? These are null questions as, by definition, an atheist has no need for a church, at least not for prayer and sermons. It’s a shame, really, as while the routine of Sunday
Apps are the best hope for Moscow’s architectural heritage
You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. So it is in Moscow, where on the occasion of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s unveiling, the architect Rem Koolhaas told The Guardian “you can say so many things about the Soviet system that were bad, but in terms of public architecture it was g
How do you bring the magic of Spelunky to 3D architecture?
Mark Johns is chasing a ghost. This is what he tells me. It’s not quite the truth. The spectral quality of this “ghost” isn’t immateriality; interfacing with it isn’t a problem, Johns has done that thousands of times. The hard bit, and the bit he’s after, is understanding it. The ghost is actually S
The aesthetics of a videogame conference
At E3, you can tell a publisher’s power by the carpeting in their booth. Seriously.
It’s time to start thinking about public squares as democratic tools
First there was the Bilbao Effect, a quasi-spiritual conviction that erecting architecturally compelling museums would bring in droves of tourists and revitalize woebegone industrial cities. Now we’re starting to what you might call the High Line Effect (after New York’s High Line park). The Bilbao
Miyamoto explains how he turned his love for a Japanese shrine into a videogame
“When there’s an arch you want to go under it, right? That’s the kind of game I wanted to make.” When Shigeru Miyamoto delivers lines like that no one knows what he means. Not at first. He may be the famed designer of many of Nintendo’s most successful videogames from the past 35 years but Miyamoto
In DotCity, the monster to your futuristic mega city will be an unceasing population
Allegedly there are projects on Kickstarter other than Shenmue 3. Allegedly DotCity is one of those projects. DotCity, which was created by Nathan Irondot, is a city simulator that challenges you to manage resources and guide your metropolis out of the industrial revolution and far into the future.
An exhibit celebrates the brutalist playgrounds of the past, as should we all
Brutalism gets a bad name. Ok, let’s be honest, it has a bad name. If tomorrow morning you were tasked with encouraging parents to send their kids to a specific playground, you probably wouldn’t call it brutalist. Or would you? For a brief, wonderful moment in the middle of the 20th century, archite
What Cities: Skylines does-and doesn’t-say about our dying world
Colossal Order’s game and the neoliberal ideal.
Best light show ever takes place in cathedral
Sometime in the 1820s, Nicéphore Niépce created “View from the Window at Le Gras,” an image from his countryside estate that would later become the world’s oldest surviving photograph. Nearly two centuries later, people snap, discard, and forget about pictures more precise and vibrant than anything
Decaying New York Pavilion reminds us of the 1960s vision of the future
In 1964 and 1965, people flooded into the newly built, brightly-coloured New York State Pavilion in Queens, N.Y., to get a glimpse of new innovations, like telephone modems and computer terminals with keyboards, for the 1964 World’s Fair. Today, the New York State Pavilion resembles the ruins of an
Ingenious coffee table doubles as labyrinth
Benjamin Nordsmark’s Labyrinth Table is not Kramer’s coffee table book about coffee tables—sadly, nothing ever will be—but it’s pretty damn cool nonetheless. “The Labyrinth Table,” writes Nordsmark, “was created to show how a well-known object like a table can be given an extra dimension by creati
The School: an essay concerning Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
“We got this new game,” he said in biology class, “where you just get to wander around and skate.”
The spirit of P.T. will live on after all
P.T. was a mirage. Thirsty for horror, we supped from its frightening wellspring, it sending shudders through our bodies and electric in our hairs. We were revitalized. Then it was taken from us. Konami shut it all down, both P.T. and the game it acted as a teaser for, the now vaporware survival hor
Kitty Horrorshow’s most personal game yet is a trip through sad architecture
The architecture in Kitty Horrorshow’s videogames has always had the biggest presence. In CHYRZA it was a midnight pyramid that bore down upon you while collating pieces of its monstrous history. Sunset Spirit Sky had jagged helter-skelters to climb and silhouetted windmills with blades like black k
Architect is so obsessed with LEGO he dedicated a part of his house to it
An architect’s Lego room maps out his obsession
The secret history of the Legacy of Kain
A return to the twisted world of Soul Reaver.
Larger-than-life opera house photographs overwhelm the senses
If you’ve ever wanted to see the grandeur of an opera house in awe-inspiring, larger-than-life color and detail, New York City-based photographer David Leventi’s photographs will have you reeling. Leventi captured the inside of famous, virtually empty opera houses, from the Metropolitan Opera in New
Everything you ever feared about conversation now exists in game form
In Menagerie, the conversation never ends. Menagerie physically traps you in conversation. Welcome to Menagerie, the networking event from hell.
At 1 World Trade Center, history and elevators make for an awkward pairing
There are things you want to see while locked in an elevator. And then there’s the sight of the neighboring skyscraper suddenly disappearing from the skyline. The elevators leading to 1 World Trade Center’s observatory offer both. This is not a malicious prank. As they ascend to the 102nd floor, the
Sunset arrives May 21, but you can play it before then at Two5Six
Come to our free arcade in Brooklyn to play Tale of Tales’ latest before its release.
Memories of a Broken Dimension is here to destroy everything
XRA’s brutal, brutalist glitch experiment is more unsettling by the day.
Fashion your own sublime diorama of impossible architecture in Brick Blocks
Gravity is the biggest downer in architecture and urban planning, so why not just do away with it? This, admittedly, is not advice that professionals should heed. But what if you just want to have a little bit of fun designing a structure that has no practical use? For moments like that, there’s Osk
Hidetaka Miyazaki’s transcendent quest for beauty in Bloodborne
The obsessions of an artist.