Design Gaming, Designing Games - Learning Design through Game Playing and Game Making

Abstract

This is an ongoing effort to make design learning fun and constructive. The process of designing, in many respects, is very similar to playing games: exploring possibilities under certain constraints. Since 1999, the “designing as game playing” concept has been used in architectural design studios and related courses in my institution. In the early years, preexisting games or games created by instructors were used. These games were played in a junior-year course that emphasized design decision-making and design collaborations. In recent two years, design game making has been used as a vehicle for senior-year student to strengthen their analytical skills. So far, students have developed games of Mario Botta, Le Corbusier (Villa Savoy), Aldolf Loos, Mies van der Rohe, and Richard Meier. Two more games are underdevelopment: the games of Isosaki and Tadao Ando. Some of these games have been used in freshman-year courses to introduce certain principles of form composition. Playing design games enables students to gain design knowledge as well as to be able to view design constraints constructively as special characteristics on the game board that may turn to their advantages rather than as useless stumbling blocks. Designing games requires students to analyze existing designs in great details as well as to be able to organize certain relationships of these details into operable rules that could produce new designs. The experience of teaching “games and design” to-date has been a very fruitful one. Future work will focus on design gaming for freshman students and game designing for senior students, as well as the interaction between the freshmen (game players) and the seniors (game designers).