ABSTRACT

‘The Architecture of ScarCity Game’ is a pedagogical tool that challenges architecture students by involving them in a series of experimental design sessions to understand the pedagogy of ‘scarcity design process’. This means understanding the different variables of the design process of traditional communities under conditions of scarcity.

Additionally, the game further develops by limiting students’ design exploration from a minimum possible perspective developing locally available resources and techniques. The key elements of the design process of traditional knowledge communities have to be identified. Furthermore, students taking the new architect’s role within these communities have to speculate and explore the interface between craft, low technological tools, computation, data, and construction. Simulation of these elements will affect the resultant structures and architecture production.

The result is a tool to challenge conventional methods of teaching and learning as well as controlling a prescribed design process. It confronts the rules that professionals in this field take for granted. The game simulates a ‘fake’ reality by exploring, in different ways, with surveyed information. As a result, participants do not have anything ‘real’ to lose. Instead, they have all the freedom to innovate and be creative.