Based on the hypothesis of maximum density = maximum desires, the studio explores the potentials of negotiation and density. Through the development of multi-user real-time video games, the studio explores participatory design processes through gaming to model the competing desires and egos of each inhabitant in a housing block and designs their apartments accordingly in the fairest way possible.

EgoCity, instead of juxtaposing compromised individual “dreams”, proposes a new urban model whose primal matter is its citizens’ most crazy fantasies. It is a project that goes far beyond a theatre of formal architectural folies and aspires to construct, in urbanized and dense conditions, a participative dream, a living mosaic that contains an unlimited amount of desired situations. In order to achieve that, rather than focusing on an aesthetic result, a particular interest has been manifested in the development of an appropriate gaming process that would be capable of taking advantage of every player’s selfishness and then transform it into a spatial potential. We consider that this constant emergence of unexpected typologies can be proven a vehicle of crucial interest towards an authentically human-driven architecture.

Studio project with The Why factory

In collaboration with Charles Ducerisier, Chun Hoi Hui, Francesco Barone, Félix Borel, Iason Stathatos, Javier López-Menchero Ortiz de Salazar, Lucile Dugal, Marek Nosek, Matteo Pavanello, Niels Baljet, Olga Terzi, Prokop Matej, Tarryn Leeferink, Woo Soojung, Zichen Liu, Loes thijssen