Introductory Design

Common Ground: Collaborative Voxels

Bachelor Design Course „Kurzentwerfen“; keywords: collaboration, virtual community, cyberspace 

Game developed as part of Bachelor Design Course „Kurzentwerfen“ by instructors.

In the times of a global pandemic, where social contacts are reduced to a minimum and universities switched to distance learning, we believe that the idea of cyberspace as a social platform bears unexploited potentials. We hope that it will enable us, the students, and maybe even larger parts of society to grow new social and academic practices and offer alternatives to physical (and currently forbidden) forms of interactions. 

This past year, online teaching led us to create a real-time multiplayer game where first-year architecture students can design together, even if they are in quarantine at home. Our goal was to give every student an equal chance to participate, meet classmates and even create designs collectively through virtual collaboration. The platform’s interface enables the students to aggregate a series of different building elements into a larger whole. 
The elements were designed by the students and uploaded to the game later. The building system relies on a voxel logic which is one widely used in game environments. The resulting collaborative digital structure is the proof that a real-time building platform can be one way of digitalizing social contacts within the educational workplace.

 

Check out our MIRO board to see all the final projects!