Minecraft School of Architecture History and Theory Studies Student: Sabrina Hoi Ching Lee Tutor: Sofia Krimizi
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft is a video game created in 2009 by Markus Persson, with more than 100 million copies sold. Its genre is called open-world or sandbox1: players don’t complete levels or follow the story of their character; instead they are simply placed in a procedurally generated, low-resolution, pixelated 3-D world with blocky landscapes, animals and objects. In Survival mode, players mine and craft blocks and have to prevent starvation and enemy attacks. In Creative mode, almost everything is readily available and the player is invulnerable. In all of the modes, players build things with blocks. Architecture has always toyed with the idea of play as a learning tool. And, with video games gaining widespread popularity in recent decades, there is an emerging connection between architecture and video games. In the case of Minecraft, that connection is mostly based on it being an opportunity to play ‘architecture’ in a similar way that Lego blocks allow – unleashing the creativity of children with the freedom of building everything they can imagine. Even though the current conversation is only superficially identifying that linkage, both from the side of architectural education and the side of Minecraft gamers, this essay is going to attempt a deeper dive into their relationship. Minecraft, with its multiple game modes, is a world in itself that cannot really be defined by a single category of video games. It is an archetype of a game across multiple genres of videogames, involving different dimensions of play. Indeed, there is a multifaceted relationship between architecture and play that connects architectural education and Minecraft together. By drawing comparisons between Minecraft and different pedagogical models applied in architecture schools across history, this essay argues that a game like Minecraft can actually challenge and simulate established teaching structures, morph into an architectural curriculum, and ultimately become a digital alternative for architectural education.
Kindergarten “Here, then, we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom.”2 The education of an architect might begin as early as the kindergarten stage. The gifts designed by Friedrich Froebel for kindergarten is said to have taught young Frank Lloyd Wright architectural lessons, without him knowing at the time, yet have later influenced his work.3 The third Froebel’s gift is a building-block set - eight small cubes divided from a two inches cube, embodying concepts of outer and inner, part-to-whole, scale, and complementary form. Its abstraction has made the blocks openended and symbolic and therefore stimulate imagination and conceptualization4. Minecraft’s low-resolution blocks are comparable to the toy blocks in this sense, and to the Minecrafters this is “an asset, making 3D design and space-making both accessible and desirable”5. But Minecraft blocks differ from Froebel’s that they are still representational, with simplified colours and patterns of nature’s elements such as wood and rock. It is a balance between abstraction (Froebel’s blocks) and representation (other realistic construction toys which Froebel disagree with); the latter, in Minecraft case, helps introduce player the complexity of different elements and materials and their patterns and combinations. In Minecraft Creative mode, there is no instruction and expected outcome, just like the building-block set. It is a free-form play that gives us an inhibited freedom to build things, and encourages our creativity and discovery. Apart from the absence of goals and rules, the nature of play itself also fosters our imagination and experimental attitude. A Minecraft world is not the reality we live in but “a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own”6. It is where we step out of our real life and “pretend”. The pretending nature of play as a result fosters our imagination of this unordinary world. A Minecrafter can build something and rearrange them, destroy them, and repeat. The game can be paused, resumed, deleted, restarted, just as play is an “interlude of our daily lives”, “a temporary activity satisfying in itself and ending there”7. There is no cost, commitment and consequences in building with those blocks, and this allows us to be playful and experimental. The Kindergarten teaches architecture through explorative and constructive play with its toys, and Minecraft can simulate this education with its blocks too. 1 Alex Wiltshire, “Made in Minecraft,” in Videogames: Design, Play, Disrupt, ed. Kristian Volsing and Marie Foulston (London: V&A, 2018), 172. 2 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, (Routledge, 1980), 15. 3 Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002), 138-145. 4 Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten, 50-51. 5 Wiltshire, “Made in Minecraft,” 172. 6 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 15. 7 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 19.
Minecraft School of Architecture
Ecole des Beaux-Arts “The community of Minecraft is what I think of as Minecraft these days,” Jeb, co-founder1 Minecraft can be played both offline and online. In its multiplayer mode, Minecrafters can interact with each other and there formed the Minecraft community. The social structure, culture, norms and behaviours of the players is a significant part of Minecraft, similar to how the social structure and student culture is a significant part of architectural education. While the Ecole des Beaux-Arts is the school where students draw sculptures and attend lectures, the ateliers were where they really learn architecture. If Minecraft - which has its official multiplayer platform, websites of information and tutorials - is the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, then the unofficial Minecraft servers are the ateliers. These Minecraft servers allow players to play in the same world and are set up by the players independently; it is where Minecrafters form communities, learn and practice their skills. The ateliers had different sizes and focuses; Jules Andre’s atelier focused on circulation, and Gaston Redon’s was more into decoration2. The Minecraft servers are very diverse as well. Westerocraft, a big server, aims to recreate the Game of Throne’s world. Earth MC is a geopolitical server with an earth map where players can build towns. There are thousands of servers with a wide range of themes, but a noticeable number of them are dedicated to recreating and referencing existing architecture and worlds (real and fictional) – which is consistent with the learningby-imitating curriculum of Beaux-Arts. Just as students of the Beaux-Arts would apply for an interview to join the atelier and follow the patron, to become part of Westerocaft’s building team, players must submit an application with a ‘portfolio’ of house(s) they built. If the player succeeds, he will be assigned a leader, and should “keep in close contact with your probation leader and discuss build techniques with them”3. This leader, then, is much like the experienced student leader of an atelier who help guide the new students. A company of students learning together is what made the atelier valuable. Students would help each other and criticise designs through informal exchange of ideas about architecture. At the same time, they would joke and sing silly songs and operas. In Westerocraft, everyone is encouraged to leave constructive criticisms on others’ works as well. “If you have feedback, place a melon block somewhere above their building with your message written on it with signs. If you are replying to feedback, use any other block but melon.”4 Apart from this formal system of communication, there are also text and voice chat, called a discord, which can be informative, helpful, but also completely chaotic and hilarious. It is a video game after all – players joke, have fun, do silly activities and make friends. “The exceptional and special position of play is most tellingly illustrated by the fact that it loves to surround itself with an air of secrecy. Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count. We are different and do things differently.” 5
Students from one atelier rarely go to another atelier. If one did, he would probably “get a bucket of water on his head”6. A Minecraft server can also be secretive, especially the smaller ones. With a whitelist option, even knowing the IP address is not enough, people will have to get approved to enter the world. The fact that play is linked to secrecy shows the strong and unique bond between the player groups. It is especially true for Minecraft players where they put so much dedication to build something together. This sentiment resembles the architectural student culture as well, the strong sense of belonging within an atelier (or a unit today), with their ways of doing things that are different from others. 1 Stephanie Milton, Minecraft Handbook Official Beginner’s Guide (London: Egmont, 2013), 77. 2 Arthur Drexler and Richard Chafee, The Architecture of the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts: Museum of Modern Art (New York: MOMA, 1975), 96. 3 “Newbie Guide,” WesterosCraft Wiki, accessed December 06, 2018, http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/wiki/Newbie_guide. 4 WesterosCraft Wiki, “Newbie Guide.” 5 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 22. 6 Drexler and Chafee, Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, 92
Minecraft School of Architecture
“Consequently virtue, honour, nobility and glory fall at the outset within the field of competition, which is that of play.” 1 Competition composes a major part of the architectural study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Students’ designs were judged through their participation in monthly competitions (concours). The Grand Prix is the ultimate contest where the best students strive to win and get to the top of the pyramid with the highest honour. Contest is used as a way to give students the driving force to study and practice and as a means to gain recognition and reputation in the field. In an architectural concours in Beaux-Arts - students had to sign his name in the book of registrations for concours, then they were given copies of the program. They would enter a special building, each student with a small cubicle, and then they would have 12 hours to study the program and draw a preliminary sketch recording the essential form of his architectural design. They were allowed to talk together but no one else was allowed to join them. After that, they would develop their design further and submit it for competition.2 In a Minecraft Brutalist architecture competition held by RIBA and Blockworks: players first applied for the competition beforehand. A recreation of Birmingham Central Library was built by Blockworks as an example and inspiration for the work players would produce. During the competition period which lasted one week, players would connect to a special server set up specifically for the competition, where each player was assigned a 100x100 plot, and they would create a Brutalist-inspired building there. After a week, players submitted their builds to be judged.3 The RIBA Brutalist competition is just one of the many contests of different scales, held by groups and servers. In Minecraft, there is a strong culture of comparing each other’s works and strive for improvement and excellence. For players who love to build, they enjoy checking out the great work or the winning work by people around the world, and joining contests to challenge themselves. Play as contest, which is demonstrated in this side of Minecraft, applied very well to the competition aspect in architectural education.
Bauhaus “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.”
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Basic workshops are the foundation of Bauhaus’ curriculum. Workshops that study and explore materials are particularly emphasised in order to let students gain an understanding of their unique qualities. Gropius believed, ‘the freedom of the artist’ is not creating without boundaries, but to design freely within limits imposed by different matters like material.5 “In each situation, we must be able to assess the importance of the factors that influence the design; visual requirements, speed and method of construction of fabrication, cost, maintenance, environmental impact and durability, and relate these factors back to available technologies”. 6Although this is part of the synopsis from the Technical Studies material course in AA, the idea is the same with Gropius’s focus on the practical aspects of design such as production and technology – it is essential for architects to have this knowledge in order to build original, functional and beautiful buildings.
1 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 14. 2 Drexler and Chafee, Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, 85 3 “Brutalist Build,” Blockworks, accessed December 06, 2018, https://www.blockworks.uk/bruatlist-build/ 4 Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), 41. 5 Walter Gropius, the new architecture and the bauhaus, (Cambridge: MIT Press. 1998), 62. 6 Javier Castanon and Danae Polyviou, Technical Studies 2 Materials Extended Brief, (London: AA School of Architecture, 2018.)
Minecraft School of Architecture
Every type of block in Minecraft has specific qualities, including blast resistance, light-emittance, transparency, durability and flammability. Furthermore, natural blocks are located in different areas of a landscape and have different production methods. The factors that players need to consider when building things are somehow similar to the ones mentioned above, as seen from Blockopedia, a book about Minecraft blocks: Stone: “Since stone is all around you, you’ll fine yourself mining a whole lot of it. It takes 7.5 seconds to destroy with fists, 0.6 seconds with a stone pickaxe, and just 0.2 seconds with a gold one. Gold tools don’t last long but if you need to do some speedy mining they may be worth the investment.” 1 Clay and Hardened Clay: “Clay usually form in clusters on the gravel and sand beds of rivers and lakes.” “You can make hardened clay by smelting clay blocks. … It’s quite attractive, too, making it a useful building material. You can find hardened clay naturally occurring in mesa biomes. Even better, you can then use dyes to colour hardened clay into 16 different colours of stained clay. So perhaps clay’s worth all the trouble after all.” 2 More advanced design workshops in Bauhaus had a problem-solving approach and are open-ended. When Gropius was designing his house in Massachusetts, it is said that he used the approach developed at the Bauhaus, that the requirements of his home office and his family, the wish to display the Bauhaus furniture he brought from Germany, the characteristics of the site, the climate in America, his limited budget, are all “givens in a complex problem”. 3 In Creative mode, the abundance of blocks is irrelevant as players have an infinite inventory to create. Bu in Survival mode, players must collect resources, build houses and structures, battle with attackers, find food to eat in order to survive. Each time a Minecraft world is generated by computer, the landscape is different and players have to respond to the biomes they are in, such as plains, desert, extreme hills and taiga; it also means that the resources, including building material, plants and animals, will be different. In multiplayer mode, players may be each other’s enemy or survival partners. Different survival servers have different rules and objectives. With all these different situations, it can be said that players build buildings based on a set of givens as well. Game is in fact comparable to a design brief. A game is a “rule-based formal system”, where gamers have freedom to act and make a series of choices that will influence the outcome, which is variable and depends on how the gamers play the game.4 A design brief is also where students can respond freely to a formal set of given “rules” or conditions. The unique decisions taken along the way affect the design at the end, and the student strives to get a great outcome like a player would strive to succeed. Design brief usually has several layers integrated into one as well, like the multiple sub-systems in the game of Minecraft. Students don’t just learn one thing during a brief, but multiple things, as that is the nature of architectural design. Therefore, a design brief can be seen as a game format, and can be conducted inside a game like Minecraft, where there are all the limitations and qualities related to material, environment, people and more. Another feature of Bauhaus is the student projects which covers a wide range of disciplines from sculpture to weaving. Projects are no longer limited to designing a certain type of buildings as was the curriculum of Beaux-Arts. In Minecraft, a lot of unconventional builds can be found online - sculptures, pixel art “paintings”, skeletons of dinosaurs, spaceships, mazes, and more. With the existence of the redstone block, which can be used as a source of electricity and circuit, players can build highly sophisticated engineering work such as an actual 16-bit working computer drive. The fact that these projects, spanning from fine arts to engineering are frequently shared among the community, shows that these unique and fun projects are celebrated, which encourages more players to expand their interests outside building houses and develop more skills, which always be applied back to architecture in some way.
1 Alex Wiltshire, Minecraft Blockopedia (New York: Scholastic, 2015), 13. 2 Wiltshire, Minecraft Blockopedia, 36-38. 3. Reginald R. Isaacs, Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1991), 67. 4 Jesper Juul, Half-real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 20.
Minecraft School of Architecture
Architectural Association The AA school today is more than the combination of the above three architectural education models. The field of architecture is forever expanding and so is the curriculum of architectural education, demonstrated by the distinct range of units and courses in the school. Intermediate 3 “Fictional and literary inspirations informing process and/or programme (including video games, graphic novels, sci-fi films and classic fiction) ...Stories from ancient myths will meet the sensibilities of science fiction, bridging culture and technology in students’ projects.” 1 Game is fiction. In a game world setting like Minecraft, many players, influenced by films, books and cultures, are naturally inclined to build fantasy and imaginative fictional worlds, from Greek mythologies to sci-fi films like Star Wars, sometimes with their own twist. Game is a kind of story-telling as well and many Minecrafters build their cities and world with a narrative for the visitors. Mechanisms, in a technological or engineering sense, are also something that many Minecrafters do, such as a portcullis and a lava trap room, with different compartments, different connections and triggers. Blocks like redstone that behaves like a circuit for electricity allow so many opportunities to design all kinds of mechanisms and innovative designs. Intermediate 6 Inter 6’s focus on space, circulation and program on a building scale is what every architectural student learn since First Year. In Minecraft, these architectural terms are also relevant when building houses and structures, especially when having a battle against a team of online players. In a guidebook focusing on fortress, tips include ways to build quick and effective paths and stairs that also avoid enemies’ shooting arrows and catapults. Room placement for food supplies, mining area, inventory place is also discussed. Although here the purpose of architecture is mainly defense, outside this war game there are many players who build places such as mansions and museums for other online players to enter and navigate around.2 Intermediate 9 “The project is a crossover between food environments and physical habitable environments, ” Jasmine Abu Hamdan3 “A series of farm plots extending from the existing building provides and protects the productive value of the open spaces around…. how traditional farmhouses sites within and are connected to the given terrain,” Sheng-ching Wu4 Food production is an essential activity in survival mode that keeps the player alive. In blogs like “Minecraft World’s Exhaustive Guide to Food Farming”, abundant information about managing farmland and animals can be found, a lot of them related to the specific terrain and landscape, as well as its relationship with other building structures. Coupled with the need to mine for resources (ores and other blocks), more advanced players will build an entire production system including farming, mining, and building.
1 Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos, Intermediate 3 Extended Brief, (London: AA School of Architecture, 2018). 2 Craig Jelley, Minecraft: Medieval Fortress (Random House Publishing Group, 2016), 25-40. 3 AA School of Architecture Projects Review 2018, , accessed December 07, 2018, https://pr2018.aaschool.ac.uk/INTER-09. 4 AA School of Architecture Projects Review 2017, , accessed December 07, 2018, https://pr2017.aaschool.ac.uk/INTER-09.
Minecraft School of Architecture
DRL Computational design makes use of the computer’s capability in handling large amount of data to run simulations under different parameters and algorithms. Minecraft, as a game with multiple sub-systems, also is like a simulation that is reacting to different set rules as well as how the player acts. These rules can actually be designed by the players too, if they learn how to code. With this, many Minecraft servers have their own lines of codes rewritten, resulting in their own rules, their own terrain map, and ultimately their own game and world. Furthermore, there are also special blocks in Minecraft that can take command, and with the appropriate code and design, they can, for example, help mining for ore blocks automatically. In UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, a research unit called Videogame Urbanism studies new urban forms through the making of video games1. Students learn architecture not by being a player, but by being a game designer. With Minecraft’s freedom for coding and manipulating all kinds of elements in the Minecraft world, players can learn by designing their own games too. Intermediate 1 “Fuelled by experience as purpose, this architecture calls for a new form of practice that recognises human cognition and perception, and takes responsibility for how the rooms we inhabit –be they physical, virtual, or a mixture of the two– shape our lives in the most fundamental of ways.”2 Player-made games like ‘The Dropper’ shows how Minecraft can be used to create intimate and intensely visual special experiences for everyone to visit. In the last few years, Minecraft has been available to play with Virtual Reality headset, meaning the spatial experience that players have will be stronger and better. In Inter 1, Virtual Reality is a tool to study space and architecture, but it is becoming more than a testing ground for the physical reality – in the unit, architecture can be across realms, and the virtual realm is taken as seriously as the physical realm. Coalchella, a concert in 2018 that took place entirely in Minecraft with live performances and attractive venues for hundreds of visitors, proves that virtual reality can really be part of people’s life and experience. In that case, Minecraft can be more than a limited substitute for the architectural education set for the physical world (one cannot practice actual wood crafts virtually); it can be the architecture school for the virtual world, even in Minecraft itself.
Through arguing that Minecraft can become a school of architecture, this essay operates as the dissecting table able to juxtapose Minecraft and the education of an architect. It is an experiment to connect the two fundamentally different structures through the notions of play. By analysing architectural education through the lens of a Homo Ludens (a term coined by Johan Huizinga meaning ‘Man The Player’), and the notion of play through the lens of a student of architecture, we can argue that the Minecrafters and architecture students have surprisingly a lot in common. There are numerous quotes in Homo Ludens that can be perfectly applied to architectural education if we just replace ‘play’ with suitable words, for example: architecture student’s “To dare, to take risks, to bear uncertainty, to endure tension - these are the essence of the play spirit.” 3 A significant part of architectural education can be considered as some form of playing and gaming. Should we actually then approach the reality of architectural education today from this perspective as well? If we adopt the attitude of a player, a video gamer in order to learn architecture, what will actually happen - will it make architectural education more experimental and fun? Probably. Yet perhaps ultimately, this radical change of mindset would not make a difference, as the quote above continues: “Tension adds to the importance of the game and, as it increases, enables the player to forget that he is only playing.” 4 1 “Videogame Urbanism,” You Pea, , accessed December 07, 2018, http://www.youandpea.com/videogameurbanism/. 2 Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, Intermediate 1 Extended Brief, (London: AA School of Architecture, 2018). 3 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 51. 4 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 51.
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft blocks
Froebel blocks
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft servers
AA units (derived from ateliers)
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft project - Cælestes Horti / SkyGardens, by ArchiGa, 2018
Beaux Arts Drawing - Paris Opera House, by Paul Jacot, 1845
Minecraft School of Architecture
Ecole des Beaux-Art student community
Minecraft community (screenshots from Minecraft gameplay video, with subtitles by Youtuber WorstPremadeEver)
Minecraft School of Architecture
Winners of the Brutalist Build competition
Ecole des Beaux-Arts students’ work for concours
Minecraft School of Architecture
Blockopedia
Material Matters: New Materials in Design (found in AA Library)
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft players works
Bauhaus students works
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft project by Astrium 01
Intermediate 3 student work by Reina Mun
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft project by Mydelko
Intermediate 3 student project by Leong-nin Chan
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft: Medieval Fortress
Intermediate 6 student project by Woojin Kim
Minecraft School of Architecture
Minecraft gameplay - farming and production
Intermediate 9 student project of an urban farm, a botanical garden and a restaurant, by Sheng-chin Wu
Minecraft School of Architecture
Game level from The Dropper
Game level from The Dropper
Intermediate 1 student work by Yana Kushpitovska
Intermediate 1 student work by Jia-qing Chan
Minecraft School of Architecture
Bibliography “Architecture and Urbanism MArch (DRL) – AA School.” AA DRL. Accessed December 07, 2018. http:// drl.aaschool.ac.uk/. Brosterman, Norman. Inventing Kindergarten. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. "Brutalist Build." Blockworks. Accessed December 06, 2018. https://www.blockworks.uk/bruatlist-build/. Drexler, Arthur, and Richard Chafee. The Architecture of the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts: Museum of Modern Art, New York: MOMA, 1975. Gropius, Walter. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Huizinga, Johan H. Homo Ludens. Routledge, 1980. Isaacs, Reginald R. Gropius: An Illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1991. Jelley, Craig. Minecraft: Medieval Fortress. Random House Publishing Group, 2016. Juul, Jesper. Half-real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. Milton, Stephanie. Minecraft Handbook Official Beginner's Guide. London: Egmont, 2013. "Newbie Guide." WesterosCraft Wiki. Accessed December 06, 2018. http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/ wiki/Newbie_guide. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. “Videogame Urbanism.” You Pea. Accessed December 07, 2018. http://www.youandpea.com/videogameurbanism/. Volsing, Kristian, and Marie Foulston. Videogames: Design, Play, Disrupt. London: V&A Publishing, 2018. Wiltshire, Alex. Minecraft Blockopedia. New York: Scholastic, 2015. Wingler, Hans, and Joseph Stein. The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.