Article
The Impossible Scaffold
Architectural metaphor in videogames.
Architecture
Review
Design & punish: A review of Prison Architect
To punish less, but to punish better.
News
Get ready to unlock Pavilion’s beautiful architectural puzzles later this year
Pavilion doesn’t explain itself. The kind souls at Visiontrick Media have left that to scribes and, as was announced today, owners of PC, Mac, and Linux computers by the end of the year. Let’s give it a try, shall we? (The new trailer below should help.) Pavilion is a puzzle. What isn’t? As was prev
News
Stop what you’re doing and gawp at these perplexing architectural collages
What’s the difference between art and architecture? Here’s Archdaily’s Vanessa Quirk with a run of the mill definition: Art is a form of self-expression with absolutely no responsibility to anyone or anything. Architecture can be a piece of art, but it must be responsible to people and its context.
News
Ghosts of Memories sets its puzzles across beautiful, impossible structures
Ghosts of Memories is an upcoming iOS and Android game set in a mystical, isometric world of impossible architecture. While the game it resembles most, Monument Valley, presented its puzzles as compact structures to be rotated, explored, and manipulated, Ghost of Memories spreads its puzzles out acr
News
Manifold Garden turns magnificent architecture into an endless playground
William Chyr has changed the name of the videogame he’s been working on for the past two years or so. What was once known as “Relativity” is now known as Manifold Garden. And, blimey, you can see why this new title was chosen upon seeing the latest screens from the game. It really does appear as a s
News
This videogame glitch wants to be an artist too
Over the weekend, Willy Chyr encountered a rare and beautiful demon inside the code for his upcoming spatial puzzler Relativity. Beyond being a mere bug, this unknown corruption has emerged from a new shader Chyr was toying around with while creating a series of conceptual screenshots he deemed the
News
Brutalism has found a second life in Minecraft
The case for preserving brutalist architecture requires some strange contortions. Defenders of gems like London’s Robin Hood Gardens or the Orange County Government Center must claim that buildings whose charms are derived from their heft and imposing strength are at risk and in need of our protecti
News
Block’hood is everything vertical cities promise to be… and aren’t
What is a neighbourhood beyond a collection of functions such as greenspace, housing, shops, and schools—figurative building blocks that can be strung together to build a functioning environment? The neighbourhood-as-collection-of-blocks metaphor appeals to videogame creators and audiences because i
Article
Understanding the sublime architecture of Bloodborne
The secret to understanding the Souls games is through their architecture.
News
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
News
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