PEDAGOGICAL TECTONICS IN THE VIRTUAL EPOCH

2020. Initial reflective writing on the potentials of virtual pedagogy through design studios and the impact of COVID19.Keywords: pedagogy, virtual, gaming, digital, architecture.

ENTER THE VIRTUAL EPOCH
In early 2020, as effects of the global COVID19 pandemic progressively worsened, universities in Melbourne, Victoria were preparing for a lockdown in line with the State Government’s developing guidelines. RMIT Architecture was three weeks in semester 1 2020 when it executed a rapid transition of all courses online on 18th March and six days later, the transition was complete. Enter the virtual epoch. RMIT Architecture’s design studios thrive on the culture of ideas-led and venturous design experimentation and the discourse that surrounds it. In this age of uncertainty and virtual primacy, what are the pedagogical tectonics of architectural education in the virtual epoch? What begins to manifest when the tectonics transform to virtual worlds? In this challenging transition, I explored myriad digital pedagogical approaches on how I could lead design studios with a focus in spatialising highly immersive and experiential learning environments through game engines and virtual social platforms. This paper will reflect, unpack and highlight the studios’ immersive pedagogical innovations as tools and strategies for architecture education.

In semester 1 and 2 of 2020, I led a series of industry-partnered and research-led Master of Architecture design studios in partnership with the RMIT Policy Strategy Impact team titled, ‘After Type Chapter: RMIT Docklands Media Precinct’.[1] The studios explored my research interest in exploratory learning environments, typology and procedural design processes to provide experimental propositions and instigate design discourse for RMIT’s future Media building to be located at Docklands Studios in Melbourne.

At the start of the lockdown, I was immensely concerned with the type of learning experience students might receive and how we could continue the discursive culture and collaborative learning environments real-world architecture studios provide in a digital arena. Throughout the year, particularly in semester one, I trialled many digital platforms with the students in tandem with the pandemic such as different types of real-time virtual pinboards, ‘walkable’ exhibitions, video/film-making approaches, gaming and social media. In our pedagogical adventures, gaming and game engines became an inescapable engaging and immersive platform. Although I played a number of games growing up, I had no experience or knowledge on how gaming could be embedded in an architecture curriculum that would allow it to become a productive engine for design, experimentation and discourse than merely a visual gimmick. Throughout the year, we took advantage of gaming engines such as Unreal Engine and Sansar, a virtual social platform that this paper will primarily focus on.

MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAMING WORLDS
Taking inspiration from ‘Massively Multiplayer Online’ gaming worlds or more known as MMOs, the design studio rapidly explored and implemented gaming mechanics as we simultaneously traversed through the pandemic.[2] MMOs are types of games that allow users to explore imaginative worlds in an infinite capacity. In some cases players don’t necessarily need to try and ‘win’ the game - there is joy in the pure exploration of the world and the interactions within it. We utilised gaming space as a pedagogical environment in some aspects of interaction and presentation in the studio. As I was unaware on the possibilities, limits and potentials of this ‘gaming’ mode of teaching, I embedded other more familiar modes of engagement such as virtual pinboards and video-conferencing to replicate some of the approaches from the real-world.

At the time, I was searching for a platform that could feel immersive and experiential but also intuitive to use for both students and tutor bearing in mind that students still had to do their university academic work (and not to mention the mental stress the lockdown has instigated within the student population).[3] In week 5 of semester 1, the studio trialled Sansar in one of our experimental design studio sessions. Sansar is a social virtual reality platform that was first developed by Linden Lab in 2014 and later sold to Wookey Project Corp in 2020.[4] The online platform allowed users to create and design their own custom 3d environments with highly interactive social experiences. Each user is represented by a detailed avatar that is highly customisable with motion-driven body animations. Currently, Sansar focuses in providing live music events such as concerts and dance parties.[5] Although the dance animations it provided were highly entertaining and provided much needed relief for the students, we approached it with a more pedagogical attitude and enabled an architectural design studio environment for, initially, discussions on the ideas and propositions in development. We realised it was not suitable for a formal four-hour studio session as it did not easily cater for a pin-up style environment. Although it could, it would have taken too much time away in preparation rather than focusing on the students’ works for discussion. Instead it allowed for a much more immersive studio experience online that focused on a discursive culture of ideas. The studio used this platform for additional Q&A sessions and discussions occurring on a different day away from the formal studio session. It allowed students to be within a relaxed atmosphere where they could informally discuss ideas but also practice verbally articulating and questioning ideas where no drawings are present to support them. Although if required, we would utilise another program to ‘share screen’ to view drawings and diagrams.

CITY OF GOLD
As we delved deeper into semester 1 and transitioned into the design development mode of the studio, I slowly realised the potentials of the gaming mechanics as a design developmental tool. It also made me re-evaluate the importance of representation and communication in the production of new architectural ideas, positions and worlds. We had an opportunity to potentially reinvigorate design presentations in a digital realm (and potentially for future presentations when we return to campus).

In week 8 of semester 1, the studio decided to assemble all projects in one populated and curated virtual speculative world we called the ‘City of Gold’. It was a speculative world where visitors, students, academics, practitioners, partners and the curious public could explore and experience all propositions. Conceived as a series of 1:1 models made of gold and inspirited by our enthusiasm for MMOs, it was an entirely new format for both students and myself. A decision was made to keep the entire city in one material to lessen the pressure of learning an entirely new platform that was initially unplanned. Students were motivated by this development and took initiatives and shared suggestions on how it could be made more immersive but as well as how the studio could be organised to enable this new platform to work in such a short amount of time. Students also shared their 3d models to test how the world could be made traversable.

PEDAGOGICAL TECTONICS IN THE VIRTUAL EPOCH
I refer to ‘pedagogical tectonics’[6] as the pedagogical framework or structure for an architectural design studio designed by the studio leader. It views the culture of design studios as a design act and something that we as academics and practitioners can formally, spatially and experientially manipulate and influence to facilitate research and ideas-led learning environments whilst simultaneously engaged with real world scenarios. Historically, I have led studios of a similar disposition exploring design propositions for RMIT’s Urban High School where I brought together academics, practitioners, students and partners from different fields to stimulate design discourse. The pedagogical tectonics of those studios were highly-engaged, energised and full of different voices. But what are the pedagogical tectonics of architectural education in the virtual epoch?

It is immersive. Immersive not in a sense of a highly-detailed render with beautiful textured material maps and you can’t discern reality from a render. Immersive in a way that propositions and ideas could be experienced, and users could be immersed in it - live and online with other people. Users are able to study, analyse and explore the propositions; leaping out from the 2d world of floor plans and sections and onto the virtual world. Although drawings are still valued, it allows students a different perspective of their designs and allows interrogation through a different filter by walking through and exploring the building in first-person or third-person view. This is different from the limitless flying walk throughs we often see in 3d modelling programs as this version is affected by gravity and forces you to think about the practicalities of architecture – access, structure, tectonics and more.

It opens new architectural forms of media and communication. The design studios encouraged us to engage with other modes of media, communication and representation. In semester 1, the studio generated critical and curated videos that attempted to contain students’ ideas, positions, development, diagrams, drawings and more in one continuous video - we hesitated to call them ‘architectural walk-throughs’ as they delivered more than that. In weeks 11-12, we dedicated weeks for ‘atypical design development’ mode where storyboards and animatics were developed rather than architectural drawings. In semester 2, we explored game trailers as potential immersive communicative devices in disseminating & representing ideas in contrast to long videos of architectural walk-throughs and animations with background music we often see. We took the ideas generated from the design studio & encoded them into the mediums of popular culture.

It is beyond A0 panels. How else can architecture projects be presented and critiqued beyond pinned-up panels; beyond videos and animations; and now beyond pdfs in video-conferencing platforms. I often joked in my previous studios that we should build 1:1 models and now it is possible - virtually. In semester 1, the studio allowed us to quickly interrogate the potentials and value of massively multiplayer online gaming worlds as stages for architectural discourse and development. For years, I have seen students develop their designs through various 3d modelling programs in detail to which they would extract key views and the base of their architectural drawings and in some cases, the detailed modelling work never sees the light of day. The idea of creating an open world where students’ propositions could be explored at 1:1 gave students the challenge of ensuring their conceptual agendas from the first half of semester successfully bridged to the practical developmental outcomes of the second half. This meant considering not only the theoretical groundings of the studio, but also the practical concerns and ambitions that came with our industry partner’s functional brief. Students also had to consider that visitors could potentially explore every single part of their architecture - exposing areas that were not considered or developed. It also allowed us to, for the first time, question how we could not only show the ideas but also how we could experience them. How could we communicate ideas beyond the production of traditional views where now we are able to essentially give an online tour of projects live with guest critics roaming in your building with you.

In week 14, students’ final presentations were held in our conceptual City of Gold via Sansar with students and guests participating via their custom avatars. The final presentations were open to the public and everyone had the ability to explore the world as they wished – they could partake in the presentations or roam around instead. Students focused in presenting their final propositions via critical cinematic video presentations projected inside the students’ 1:1 virtual buildings. Students, visitors and critics would assemble in each student’s building and watch the presentations followed by commentaries and questions. The presentations were supplemented by students producing a compendium of their projects that delved in much more detail such as detailed drawings, diagrams, design processes and an appendix of early explorations. The compendiums were made available to all guests, days in advance of the event.

NOT ALL FUN AND GAMES
The studios weren’t all fun and games. There were definite challenges in ‘gamifying’ architecture – both technically and conceptually as we attempted to understand this unique approach whilst developing the projects. Not so much in semester 1 but something that became more apparent in semester 2 where the studio shifted in utilising Unreal Engine, was to ensure that the digital infrastructure was established before the commencement of the studio. That is setting up the servers, live-sharing and digital gaming collaboration tools to ensure a seamless (or as much as possible) transition to collaborative virtual environments. In semester 2, it became a hindrance as final projects were completed in groups and we had to dedicate a week of the semester setting up and researching the digital infrastructure that we could have used more productively in discussing the propositions.

As I learnt more about the implementation of game engines into architectural discourse and development – in semester 2, I made the conscious decision to prioritize the development of the ‘game’ versus the development of traditional architectural drawings. Although important, traditional drawings became of secondary concern to allow students to be engaged in the immersive and experiential capacity of gaming mechanics. It was a difficult decision as prior studios I have led have always had the attitude that ‘drawings are kings’ and were of great value in understanding the relationships within and beyond the architecture. Students still developed drawings, but it was evident that a much more detailed focus was placed in using the game engine. I believe this discussion will be kept alive and well into the future as we transition into more contemporary ways of ‘making’ and doing architecture such as utilising mixed reality technologies and similar.

A large pedagogical challenge was ensuring that students engaged with the game engine as not simply tools for communication and representation but as tools to develop the projects and to amplify their ideas. It is very easy to ‘get lost’ within the immersive worlds students create and simply become projects ‘drawn’ in a gaming engine. In semester 2, we sought to minimise this by encouraging students to develop the worlds that their projects inhabit by tapping into current affairs and discussions of culture. This resulted in some projects engaging with questions of artificial intelligence, mixed realities and pandemic-infested worlds to seek alternative perspectives to what tertiary institutions could be beyond the pragmatic ambitions of our partners and realistic assets the gaming engines could provide.

GLOBAL AND PUBLIC
What begins to manifest when the tectonics transform to virtual worlds? A global, public and accessible source of knowledge. The shift of the studio to embrace online gaming worlds as a pedagogical framework and tool has unleashed the potentials of a more immersive accessible source of information - not only for academics and practitioners but also for the general public. I would contest that what we do in architecture schools (or the profession) can still seem a bit of a mystery to the outside world – full of jargon and where people perceive us as simply producing buildings. But we engage with larger sets of questions and issues that not only encompass buildings but the environment, culture and more and the larger public would benefit in understanding this. As stated by Daria Pahhtoa of BIG’s approach in communicating architectural projects to which I agree, ‘We want to contribute to a positive discourse, to be understood by an audience who does not speak the language of floor plans or axonometrics.’[7] The proposals generated from the semester 1 version of the studio placed a priority on the tertiary institution’s role within the urban fabric and how it might begin to engage with a larger set of urban and cultural questions. Walls are disintegrated, boundaries blurred, and conditions became nebulous. These are difficult to draw and experience in a traditional drawing format and best understood by traversing through the buildings themselves with supplementary videos and animations to complete the picture. The City of Gold was made public to explore during the RMIT Architecture End of Semester 1 Virtual Exhibition.

In semester 2, students not only developed the architectural project but simultaneously developed the world and environment the projects inhabit. This allowed a series of more varied responses that was not only about engaging with the immediate context and questions of the city, but begun to challenge and contribute to larger questions about tertiary learning environments and insitutions as previously mentioned.

Over time, the ‘games’ could be expanded as a series or moulded into one massive version to generate an ‘explorable digital archive of ideas’. Imagine an ever-expanding virtual archive where architecture, ideas and propositions could be explored and experienced beyond digital pdf libraries that could engage with a wider audience beyond the walls of academia. This could potentially create a stronger dialogue and discourse beyond the profession and engage with those who will truly utilise the buildings and environments we create. It is vital that knowledge produced in the studios are not kept in a void – never to be seen again – but rather to be disseminated and broadcast to the wider public. ‘The outcome of academic education and research needs to be mediated to society, addressing and involving people from outside academia – practitioners, policymakers and society as a whole.’[8]

GAMIFYING ARCHITECTURE
Gaming, pedagogy and architecture is a stimulating combination and subject that has the potential to allow us to re-evaluate and re-engage how we teach, design and communicate architecture and ideas. The global pandemic of 2020 has forced us to remove pre-conceived notions of what architectural pedagogy is and allowed us to ask what else it could be. Viewing architecture education through a ‘gamified’ filter could allow us to re/examine past, current and future discussions and propel new modes of discourse, architecture education and practice.

ENDNOTES
1. After Type Chapter 2: RMIT Docklands Media Precinct, semester 2 2020, was co-led with Vei Tan.
2. I explored possible game engines but became aware that most required skilling up the students substantially which was initially unplanned. Sansar provided an environment that very closely resembled explorable MMOs with minimum new skills required. I implemented this in week 5 of semester 1 - only a week and a half after the lockdown.
3. Initially I simply used video-conferencing tools to speak to my students with the typical ‘share screen’ and also introduced virtual pinboards such as ConceptBoard and Miro to my students. But I was still searching for a more immersive platform.
4. Takahashi, Dean (November 17, 2014). “Linden Lab Explores VR for its Next-Generation Virtual World”. VentureBeat. https://venturebeat.com/2014/11/17/linden-lab-explores-virtual-reality-for-its-next-generation-virtual-world-interview/. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
5. See more via https://sansar.com. p2
6. I coined the term ‘pedagogical tectonics’ in 2019 whilst reflecting on a series of industry-partnered and research-led design studios I led from 2017-2019 investigating speculative propositions for secondary learning environments using RMIT’s Urban High School as a testing ground with the RMIT School of Education and RMIT Property Services as partners.
7. Daria Pahhota, “Worldcraft: Building Worlds One Project at a Time,” Architectural Design 89, no. 262 (06/2019): 51.
8. Kaps, Vera, and Staub, Peter. New Schools of Thought : Augmenting the Field of Architectural Education. (Zurich: Triest Verlag Für Architektur, 2018): 28.