Serious Fun: Architecture & Games

An imaginative inquiry into the spatial implications of 20th-century games, from doll houses to SimCity

This volume examines architecture and urban design games that have been conceived and created by architects, urban designers, artists and game developers since the end of the 20th century, from doll's houses to construction games and city building games, from SimCity to Block by Block. Serious Fun examines games from both a technical and an architectural-critical point of view. As much attention is paid to the games themselves--the way they look, their construction and rules--as to their sociospatial implications, addressing the following questions: what perception of, and interaction with, the built environment do they express? What messages do the games communicate? How critical and innovative are the underlying concepts? Serious Fun presents games and playfulness as tools worthy of earnest investigation, concluding with a triptych about alternative forms of representation and communication in architecture and urban design.
Cover image by Zupagrafika