Design Through Play: The Archispiel Experience

Abstract

This paper focuses on the implications and potentialities of playful practices and game formats as innovative teaching methods in architecture, urban planning and, more generally, design. It provides a very brief account of serious games pioneers and the current state of the art of what the authors call ‘design through play’. It then presents one game-based format, Archispiel, designed by the authors in 2015, along with a case study of its use in a classroom context, Magaluf Reset. The exercise, drawing on traditional war games and diplomacy games designed from the 1950s onwards, combines strategic negotiation with the use of chance to produce unexpected effects. Consequently, rather than solutions answering to a predefined brief, the results are quite literally the outcome of an exploratory and open-ended design logic. The experience shows how design through play offers a rich array of explorative possibilities not afforded by conventional design practices.