Resumen de Bajo la “Dirección” Videojuegos y Formación Arquitectónica

Spiros Papadopoulos, Angeliki Malakasioti, Giorgos Loukakis, Giorgos Kalaouzis

• This paper investigates the role of videogames in architectural education. More specifically, it discusses aspectsof videogame theories, methodologies and practices as communicative academic tool and describes examples ofincorporating this multimodal application in architectural education and research.Videogames are regarded as an exceptional, fully potential audiovisual medium, which is strongly related tocinematic language – therefore to a communicative multidimensional stream. They are considered as a kind offilmic space accompanied by a narrative with interactivity possibilities. A series of observations of the phenomenonof videogames are collected, and juxtaposed to spatiality issues – all seen from a designer’s as well as a player’spoint of view.The technologically mediated world of videogames is deeply correspondent with the computer-aided-designedworld of architecture - while in the process of conception or early growth of an architectural idea, or even in theevaluation of finalized or existing environments. Both videogames and architectural practice offer the possibility orreconstructing views, conditions and collective experiences of either existent or non-existent places.The paper presents this relationship through differentiated academic practices. These practices include formerexamples of audiovisual projects based on the fundamental videogame element of the ‘direction’, presentation ofa research program entitled “The urban landscape in videogames; representations and spatial narratives”, withmultiple emergent issues on their spatiality and audiovisual qualities, as well as prospective educational conceptsaspiring to integrate the totality of the aforementioned observations with the internal process of learning and creatingin an architectural school.