Reflective architecture should evolve into builds that are emergent and that respond like game environments, writes Michael Ditullio in opening a blog on Virtual Interactive Architectures.

During a recent exchange on this blog, we dealt with the ‘Prokofy Neva Thumb-Sucking Test’ which I’ll paraphrase and call the test of whether architecture (purposefully or not) sacrifices a building being accessible, practical, or livable simply for the purposes of extending its awe or wow factor. The tumb-sucking test is useful. We can ask: is this use of reflective architecture adding to our vocabulary for what makes a good in-world build, or is it there for the gawk factor.

A recent example was posted over at the Arch:

So – does it pass the Thumb-Sucking test? Probably not. (Nice music though). It does, however, contribute to the toolkit of development and extends vocabulary because it demonstrates improvements to the basic script. Over time, I’d anticipate that a set of meta-tags for reflective architecture elements might be developed so that designers, builders and architects can start to easily sort, share, and understand the tools that others have made available.

Reflective (Information) Architecture
My argument, however, was that reflective architecture can also be less about building and more about a visual representation of an underlying code set whose purpose is to persuade, and to present and allow the manipulation of information. Taken in this direction, reflective architecture is less about making buildings habitable, and more about their use as experiments in how the capacity of 3D spaces to allow us to move through objects (information) which then respond to us, might lead to new ways to teach, collaborate, and conceptualize.

This takes us past architecture as building, and into information architecture. Over at Ugo Trade, an interview with Grady Booch and extended commentary looks back in time at the evolution of software engineering and finds hints of what’s next. The following caught my attention:

There is a grand vision in David Gelertner’s book Mirror Worlds. A vision of a software revolution in which the underpinnings of our global society, the invisible machinery of software, “becomes visible and is transformed into a beautiful, poetic experience that empowers people to understand and work with the machinery of their society.”

Reflective architecture, to my mind, is one path towards the attainment of this particular vision for the enabling power of virtual worlds.

One of the insights of Grady’s archeology is that architecture that can change is architecture that endures over time. And key to this ability to be flexible and to scale, is componentization. Grady pointed out how game architecture and virtual worlds are increasingly discovering componentization. Grady links increasing maturation of architecture to increasing componentization.

Grady is talking about software architecture. Reflective architecture, viewed from one vantage point, is an attempt by “building” architects to explore these issues (whether they know it or not) from the perspective of our reaction to and relation to objects as buildings. Over time, I would anticipate this to uncover the very issues of componentization and the creation of means for making the machinery of our worlds (virtual and otherwise) visible. Architects can derive their own value from these experiments, carrying the lessons of virtual world architecture into real life builds, but I wonder whether crossing over into software rather than structural engineering might bear more fruit.

Reflective Architecture as Games
Ditullio makes the argument that the reflective architecture toolkit should be expanded to explicitly recognize game play as part of the reflective architecture form:

I believe it is inevitable that responsive spaces will begin to adopt the quality of gamespace. We can only spend so much time with virtual architectures exploring the movement of prims that change color, distance, or fragment with human/avatar input. While these explorations help us to begin to define certain interactions and interactive elements, I think the true purpose of such explorations is to develop a platform for the game by defining the parameters and introducing the players to it.

He argues for the virtues of emergent play, and the idea that architecture that’s coded using the language and concepts of game environments (he uses the analogy of music, painting a picture of how some builds are “jazz like”) should be explored. The purpose of introducing game rules to builds is because, as he says,

“While the initial visit may be spectacular, there is rarely any reason to return unless there is a new addition to the build or I am introducing it to another avatar…I think the most successful interactive architectural builds (physical or virtual) allow the users to engage the system and each other in some form of game. Virtual interactive space is perfectly suited to adopt game-like features that can easily be programmed into the overall interactive experience.”

The most interesting idea in this is that of emergent games. Engaging games are often marked by great emergent systems (sometimes to the horror and sometimes to the delight of their developers).

But what’s not clear to me is how the combination of architecture and game rules environments isn’t – well, game design. The basis of the piece if the idea that reflective architecture is unsuccessful if it has a wow factor but that people don’t return. The premise is that if you develop a game system within the architecture then people will return because it’s fun, they learn something, and that further if it’s developed well the emergent games will give more “legs” to the build because games will be played that the architect didn’t think about.

But throw in a few intelligent agents (NPCs, bots) and maybe make some of the ‘goals’ more explicit and really…isn’t it a game?

Making Visible the Code
I’ve posted at length about how the code allows, constrains, and imposes. The inability to toggle the visibility of identity towards establishing trust, for example, may be leading towards a more tribal morality in virtual worlds. We create alts because the code constrains us from partitioning the tasks and roles of our avatars, and because the tribal morality makes escape difficult – we want to leave town, but can’t.

The current pioneers of virtual worlds can contribute more code – layering new games on top of the code, for example. Or they can use architecture, art, and experience to help define our relationship to the code itself, allowing not emergent games but rather emerging conceptual frameworks.

The Virtual Network Operations Centre, for example, helps us to visualize software architecture in a 3D environment.

The Wikitecture project bridges multiple environments to create a visual tool set for collaboration.

Game developers have spent years perfecting, studying, and inventing new forms to keep users engaged in environments, usually with the purpose of getting them back. And although there’s a role for architecture as a sub-set of game development, and although there may be lessons in making real life building more fun and accessible, reflective/virtual world architecture can serve a purpose deeper than creating ‘stickiness’. It can be part of a new conversation on how our ability to manipulate information, have that information respond, and share those experiences with others is part of a dialogue that is leading us out of the information age and into the conceptual era.