What if we look at architecture through the lens of generative fiction?
What happens to a neighborhood when we design a building? Architectural design is an intricate process involving many factors, and we tend to investigate each separately. In this studio, we study micro-urban narratives by understanding design as a participatory process.
We start from an existing urban block and design the future of it through new construction, gentrification, and market-driven development. Depending on the decisions taken for each lot, the whole bloc gets redesigned. Learning from choose your own adventure games, we use branching narrative logic as a tool for world-building and invite the audience to play an interactive game and design the future of a Santa Monica block.
Santa Monica uses game engines to craft an interactive narrative for a mixed-use block in Santa Monica; each decision leads to a new block design. We design these variations collectively by simultaneously playing an interactive game where we can see the multiple scenarios play out by piecing together a plan, a physical scaled block model, and an 8-bit style game.
About the Creators
Santa Monica was a Fall 2023 graduate-level design studio led by Yara Feghali at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design (UCLA AUD), part of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts). The Santa Monica studio participants are third-year Master of Architecture candidates at UCLA AUD: Peilin Cao, Haydon Chan, Zongli Casper Li, Yufei Ma, Kinamee Rhodes, Jane Wu, Qinyi Wu, Qing Yin, and Chaoying Mavis Zhao.
Game narrative structure consulting by Rachel Joy Victor.
Unity Game Development by Folly Feast Lab.
About this Exhibition
The project space will be open on Saturdays from 12 – 5 pm from the 22nd of February to the 2nd of March.
If you want to visit outside of visiting hours, kindly email yara.feghali@aud.ucla.edu
