The Agile, Culture-Building Hacker: Advancing through uncertainty Patrick Macasaet RMIT University Melbourne
ABSTRACT This paper aims to unpack how the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed the definition of a hacker mindset for architectural pedagogy. It examines the core values of expeditiousness, agility, action, and ambition to maintain a discursive culture of ideas at a time of uncertainty. The paper describes three constellations of pedagogic hacking that manifested as a swift transition from physical to virtual was actioned as the pandemic emerged in 2020, and the platforms that were utilised. It reflects on the importance of maintaining the immersive, didactic, discursive and collaborative culture of design studios and how this culture, in conjunction with a hacker mindset, led to new discoveries and trajectories for architectural research, design and education.
KEYWORDS architectural design studio, gaming, videogame technology, hacker mindset, architecture pedagogy
77 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 The teaching of architecture at RMIT focuses ‘on ideas-led, venturous design experimentation and exploration that aspires to contribute to the future of the discipline and an increasingly complex world’,1 relying on a ‘brave’ and open to risk approach to design and learning. Design studios are arenas where we encourage students to be bold, to experiment and to wander through unknown territories within a strategically curated curriculum. But what about when uncertainty strikes, and the refined over the years face- to-face teaching modes become dismantled and, almost instantaneously, challenged by the imposition of a highly digital and virtual environment? How does one deliver a traditionally face-to-face learning practice in a virtual dimension? This question is by no means unique to RMIT and architectural courses globally have by now executed this in more or less successful ways. What is different in the period of time examined in this paper, are the circumstances and context of the speed with which this shift occurred and how it catalysed the consolidation of a hacker mindset for architectural pedagogy; one that values expeditiousness, tactical agility, action, and the ambition to maintain a discursive culture of ideas whilst foregrounding transformative student experiences and surfacing a heightened engagement with digital and virtual space.
This paper will critically reflect on a Master of Architecture design studio at RMIT University’s School of Architecture & Urban Design that unexpectedly transitioned to online delivery three weeks into the semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper attempts to unpack the following questions: how does one rapidly adapt pedagogical approaches and transformative student experiences, from real to virtual, almost instantaneously, through a time of uncertainty? How does one simultaneously deliver a pre-curated curriculum whilst exploring projective alternative pedagogical approaches and maintaining a discursive culture of ideas? And most importantly, what affordances can a hacker mindset provide as a framework for design studios as key sites of architectural education?
RMIT Docklands Media Precinct The RMIT Docklands Media Precinct2 was a Master of Architecture industry- partnered and research-led design studio that ran in the first semester of 2020 – led by myself, in partnership with RMIT’s Policy Strategy Impact Team. The studio sought to concurrently explore two primary areas of investigation, a research interest in ‘typological procedural experiments’ as a design method and an exploration on speculative propositions and alternative prototypical spatial and formal models for tertiary learning environments. These two axes were brought together to open up design discourse for the development of RMIT’s Media Building in Docklands, an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Australia. The studio population comprised of twelve students at varying stages of their education,3 of which nine were international students and three local and, all of which were based in Melbourne at the time of the pandemic.
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In early 2020, as news of the COVID-19 pandemic progressively worsened globally, universities in Victoria were preparing for a potential lockdown in line with the State Government’s developing guidelines and policies. RMIT Architecture commenced a rapid transition of all courses online on 18th March 2020 (the middle of the third week of the first semester) and by 24th March 2020, the transition was complete, providing students and staff with resources to commence online delivery from remote locations.
Hacking, architecture and education The stereotypical image of a hacker in popular culture has been a figure shrouded in secrecy attempting to illegally destabilise some sort of electronic authority. Hacking has had a negative connotation associated with it due to its portrayal in the media as a covert, illegal activity, however, it also foregrounds characteristics of creativity, resourcefulness, experimentation and discovery.4 The definition of ‘hacking’ has numerous interpretations in different disciplines; this article frames hacking as the mindset to expeditiously and specifically absorb and abstract a particular subject matter from a larger whole; to re-appropriate (or mis-appropriate) that matter through action and testing to meet requirements and enable a divergent approach to doing or making – in this case the approach to architecture education in the virtual turn. The emergence of this nebulous definition is from my own reflection and experience of delivering a pre-curated design studio curriculum through a pandemic and draws parallels with Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal’s definition of hacking as
[the] process of clever or playful appropriation of existing technologies or infrastructures or bending the logic of a particular system beyond its intended purposes or restrictions to serve one’s personal, communal or activism goals.5
In this perspective, hacking can be considered as a type of ‘design research’,6 in the way that the pursuit of knowledge is carried out through a process of creative production where the research occurs through the ‘medium’.7 However, whereby some position hacking as a deep examination of something in order to creatively manipulate tools (in this case the potential digital tools for pedagogy), my own interest is not concerned with one’s ability to command superior knowledge of a particular device but with knowing enough to creatively manipulate and translate the purpose of existing digital technologies for architectural pedagogy and design. This was certainly the case during the pandemic where our studio imaginatively manoeuvred across multiple online platforms not originally intended for an architecture design studio culture and made them fit for purpose albeit to varying degrees of success.
Literature around pedagogical hacking in architecture is surprisingly limited given the prototyping and experimental nature of design. However, examples
79 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 exist of how a hacking practice is implemented by educators in different educational contexts, particularly at secondary school level. Educational institutions such as School Retool, created in collaboration with IDEO and Stanford School, implement principles of hacking to redesign school cultures.8 They describe the core principles of a hacker mindset as ‘developing a bias towards action, starting small and failing forward’.9 Similarly, Hacker High School also integrate hacking practices at a high school level.10 Dr Maya Wizel, a prominent researcher creating new paradigms for learning and self- proclaimed ‘educational hacker’, proposed the term ‘teachers as hackers’, to describe the actions of teachers in the K-12 public system who reform and act innovatively in their practice.11 Wizel’s research unearthed consistent personal traits and habits of teacher-hackers such as being risk-takers, embrace uncertainty, adaptive and reflective.
The hacker mindset that the studio discussed here adopted, certainly embraced uncertainty: placing an emphasis on the rapid abstraction of possibilities emerging from varying digital platforms, pursuing integrative experimentation through doing and prototyping, commanding agility on what could perform well, letting go of the baggage of previously established patterns of behaviours of teaching and exploring what could be formally executed. It did this while taking big risks by prioritising progress rather than perfection.
March to the beat of your own drum As the studio transitioned to online learning, the tools we were provided with were largely typical videoconferencing platforms with screen-sharing capabilities (such as Zoom, Collaborate Ultra and Microsoft Teams) to allow the presentation and discussion of projects. These platforms were not explicitly designed for architecture or other designed contexts such as Prezi or Miro for instance, which have more explicit affinities to design and creative contexts. This posed new challenges that primarily related to the physical and spatial character of not only the subject matter of the projects but also of the output and the established modes of engagement. In normal, pre- pandemic conditions, architectural design work produced by students, could encompass multiple sheets of printed drawings pinned up on a wall (mostly to scale), physical models, and, most importantly, the discourse and social interactions that further ideas and critique. A large part of my concern was the type of pedagogical and social experience students will receive during the lockdown. Would weekly videoconferencing design studio sessions be enough to facilitate an immersive learning and social experience and, a productive engagement with the projects? Examples of various types of online platforms being used by architecture schools globally have existed before the COVID-19 pandemic , with virtual learning environment platforms (VLE) being widely used. However, no previous study or guide has ever anticipated the radical transition from physical to digital space in the context of architecture design studios, especially in such a short timeframe. In a very short time, for the
Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 | 80 project purposes of this studio, a substantial amount of possible online platforms were researched, including virtual pin-boards, spatial virtual platforms, videoconferencing tools and gaming, among others. The ones with the most potential were implemented within the studio week by week. Honesty, transparency, and a ‘flat teaching topography’,12 with the students were central in the assessment of these environments and the forms of engagement they could allow, as we embarked on a unique pedagogical journey on a completely new terrain for all of us.
Unaware at that time, the studio switched on a hacker mindset, swiftly testing multiple platforms and prototyping them for design studio pedagogy. One-hour ‘experimental design studio sessions’ were introduced to trial the platforms with and get instantaneous feedback from the students. Each platform had its advantages and disadvantages based on the type of studio session and the type of event. Due to time constraints, platforms were largely assessed based on their ability to allow the studio to productively engage with the projects, if the platform is intuitive to learn and, if it is amplifying the social and learning experience of students. Over the course of the semester, platforms weaved in and out of the studio – bending their logic for the specific demands of an architecture studio and what we needed for a specific studio condition (Table 1). The experience was in some ways akin to Tom Wujec’s approach in the TED Talk ‘Build a Tower, Build a Team’ that saw teams of four be allocated 18 minutes to build a free-standing tower with limited materials. Wujec has organised this challenge with varying groups from corporate executives, lawyers, engineers, educators and kindergartners. He discovered over a period of time that kindergartners, in particular, are consistently successful at the task as they are used to iteratively building prototypes and receiving instant feedback about what works and what does not.13 Kindergartners march to the beat of their own drum and so did we.
81 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 Platform Weeks Studio Focus/Culture Logistics and Support Student Engagement Platforms in Pros Cons ‘hacked’ Integrated Event Combination
Concept 4-13 Used for design Requires sign-up. Students can engage Used in combination Ease of use and Can default back to Board explorations, design Online platform with well if encouraged to with other intuitive. Able to limited engagement if (other development phase, varying price plans. provide peer feedback videoconferencing replicate a pin-up style tutor does not actively similar reflective tasks, mid- Able to utilise free plan by leaving comments tools such as Zoom or studio. Retain a sense engage other platforms semester crit. but with certain and notes. Microsoft Teams. Has of community allowing students. Free plan include limitations. its own in-built an overview of all can be limiting – at Miro). videoconferencing tool students works with some point a paid plan but requires paid plan. students more freely becomes more to leave peer convenient. Boards feedback. Able to save can lag when filled with boards for future many objects. reference. Able to view all users move in real- time.
Sansar 5-6, 8-14 Design development Requires all users to Very engaging for Used in combination Very immersive and All users must phase, informal sign-up and download students as they with Discord during experiential spatial download the program discussions and final program. represent themselves final presentations due environment. Able to and ensure computers presentations. with fictional avatars. to audio difficulties. customise 3d are able to handle it. Animations can be environments and Requires minor distracting at times. upload designs making learning of movement Students became them traversable and mechanics. A deep more engaged the explorable. Can assist learning curve if you more they were able in design development want to customise and to upload their and design decision- create your own designs. making processes. worlds. Requires Able to upload your significant timing to own avatar designs, prepare presentations. scripts and objects. Able to use VR Headsets.
Kunstmatrix 6-7 Mid-Semester Slow Requires sign-up but Minimal engagement. During mid-sem crit, No extra software No tools to create Crit. no additional software Hosted polemic used in conjunction required. Able to be custom 3d required. Able to student images and with ConceptBoard, view gallery on environments. operate on internet acted as a ‘home base’ Issuu and YouTube. smartphones allowing Payment required. No browser. Requires a during our mid-sem more public collaborative tools paid plan to publish crits which linked to engagement. 3d such as audio or gallery for public other locations. environment videoconferencing – viewing. templates provided. only for viewing Able to embed videos. drawings and images.
Issuu 5-7, 14 Mid-Semester Slow Requires online sign- Various levels. During mid-sem crit, Allowed students to Limited engagement. If Crit and Final up. Free plans used in conjunction produce and exhibit used within a digital Presentations. available. with ConceptBoard, more detailed design studio context, Issuu and YouTube. drawings and it needs to be used During final diagrams of projects with another social presentations used via a ‘book’ format that platform. with Sansar and were difficult to YouTube. showcase via Sansar and ConceptBoard.
Unreal 8 Design Development Requires sign-up, *Not utilised in Much more tools and High learning curve. Engine download and a Semester 1 due to the possibilities can be Massive files. significant amount of immense learning explored. Used by time to learn. curve. professional game developers, film directors, animators, etc.
BuildBox 6 Design Development Requires sign-up, *Not utilised in Could allow new Requires time to learn. download and time to Semester 1 due to approaches to gaming learn to apply in learning curve. and architecture. Able design studio. to develop 2d-3d games with templates.
Discord 13-14 (sem Requires sign-up. Can Only utilised for final Sansar Able to use Videoconferencing tool 1), 1-14 be used online but presentations in sem1 videoconferencing and is limited to 25 users (sem 2) recommended to but used for the whole chat functions with the impacting larger public download the desktop studio in sem2. ability to create studio cultural events. app. Students are highly individual servers. engaged with During final consistent presentations, guests communication were able to chat with between students as students in the you can create your background while own ‘servers’ for Sansar presentations communication. were on. Share screen functions run more smoothly as it is designed for gamers Table 1: Highlighting and comparing the various platforms the studio explored, and game streaming, prototyped and implemented during the pandemic. Some platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch and Padlet that were tested are not included in the table.
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Constellations of pedagogic hacking In the pursuit to experiment and adapt varying platforms for a virtual studio, three constellations of focus surfaced. The three constellations, further elaborated below, in part, reflected an ambition to seamlessly transition into a virtual dimension by retaining an element of familiarity to traditional real- world design studio formats, virtually spatialising the studio where students are represented by digital avatars in an immersive and spatial virtual learning environment, and embracing the new opportunities online experiences can provide.
The familiar and virtual pin-ups One of the significant limitations of videoconferencing applications as virtual design studios is the inability to replicate the pin-up environment our discipline is accustomed to, both in practice and academia. In the online context, weekly presentations and discussions centred around PDF presentations via singular page views and were neither entirely experiential for students, nor as productive as familiar physical pin-up formats, where feedback can be more fruitful and efficient when you can visually scan through a students’ body of work and establish relationships and connections. The online experience can be initially quite alien to some students and, therefore, to retain a sense of familiarity, we trialled varying virtual pin-up spaces with the assumption that they could somewhat replicate the real-world environment.
We discovered Conceptboard, a virtual pin-up board that somewhat replicated the traditional pin-up format of design studios.14 We utilised it in our first experimental studio session and students were excited with the possibilities of being able to pin-up their work again for reviews. It was not difficult to implement, and students found the platform intuitive and simple to use. This online environment was subsequently used in conjunction with videoconferencing resources. It was used from week four design studio reviews until the end of the semester; from the conceptual stage to design development, as well as for specific studio culture events such as mid-semester crits and exhibitions.15 Virtual pin-boards allowed a more seamless transition from real-world parameters to the digital as it eased the sudden shock of the shift. The virtual studio retained a sense of community as students were able to view each other’s progress in one virtual space, placing comments, notes, mark-ups and suggestions against each other’s work.16 It gave an opportunity to replicate the incidental encounters with other students’ projects that occurs often in real world studios in the digital space both synchronously, during formal studio sessions and, asynchronously throughout the semester when not in studio. It also allowed us to save the boards for future reference – cataloguing weekly progress that traditionally might end up lost after normal studio sessions. Conceptboard was assessed as a valuable tool that will therefore be retained as part of the studio as we
83 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 return into physical studio spaces in the future, as we found it useful to have Figure 1: a shared digital pin-up which can be constantly referred to throughout the Design Studio Conceptboard Week 11-12 exhibiting all semester (Fig. 1). students’ works in one virtual space used for discussions This virtual space also allowed the reconsideration of alternative models for and review of work in progress mid-semester crits or reviews, to engender a more engaging and celebratory (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). ‘learning event’.17 Towards this, the experimental Slow Crit: Global Discourse Edition18 was rapidly developed that engaged with a global community of practitioners and academics for feedback and discourse through an extended, more collaborative and productive week-long mid-semester format. More like a digital festival celebrating students’ works, this event simultaneously explored multiple online platforms for design studio discussions, engagement, dissemination of ideas and pedagogy. The use of Conceptboard centred around an asynchronous Remote Crit model held over three days where guests could leave written feedback and critique. Students in turn engaged with the guests’ written critique and were encouraged to leave feedback to each other’s works fuelling more avenues for discourse. Multiple discussions were running simultaneously between all participants, students and guests (Fig. 2). It was more comparable to an international open forum of ideas rather than a traditional ‘review’.19 Students’ feedback found the Slow Crit experience extremely worthwhile as students received numerous insightful comments instead of the more limited feedback that they would normally receive in a traditional mid-semester crit session. Although the event felt a bit unwieldly at times, it gave a critical insight to what alternative models of crits and pedagogy could be enabled by hacking and combining multiple platforms simultaneously for architectural discourse.
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Figure 2: The virtual spaces of the design studio Mid-Semester Slow Crit Conceptboard exhibiting One of the greater concerns emerging from this shift to remote teaching, was students’ work in progress how the design studio could be virtually spatialised in a way that students and projects with comments and tutors can be digitally represented by an avatar in order to participate within a feedback from our local and virtual studio environment. The virtual learning experience in seeing yourself international guests held over as a recognizable character in a virtual environment is significantly different three days via an asynchronous ‘Remote Crits’ (Patrick Macasaet, to being represented by a mouse pointer icon. Physical studio environments 2020). play a significant factor in fostering a collaborative behaviour and culture, but also in providing a sense of belonging to a team. It is an invaluable part of a transformative student experience. It can be argued that digital pin-boards constitute a type of virtual space, but, at the time, the studio was searching for a platform that could feel more immersive, experiential and intuitive to use for both students and tutor. There are many online options that can quite literally generate a virtual design studio space, such as Second Life, AltspaceVR and Facebook’s Horizon.
In one of our experimental design studio sessions, the studio trialled Sansar, an online social virtual reality platform that was first developed by Linden Lab in 2014 that currently focuses in organising live music events.20 It allows users to create and design their own custom 3D environments, avatars, items and scripts, akin to game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity, with highly interactive social experiences. Options to experience the environments via VR headsets also exist. Each user is represented by a highly customisable detailed avatar with motion-driven body animations. Although the dance animations it provided were highly entertaining, we hacked its logics of festivities to enable a more architectural studio environment for, initially, project discussions. I had an expectation that due to its original intended use, pin-up style formats would not be possible, and became simply a more spatial version of a chat room or videoconferencing tools we have been
85 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 using. As expected it was not suitable for a formal four-hour studio session Figure 3: as resources to present work in it was very limited. It is possible but required Experimental Design Studio session via Sansar in week 8 a significant amount of time to prepare which would have been much better for project discussions (Patrick suited in developing projects. Although it needed some minor work to install Macasaet, 2020). and learn the basics of movement, it was largely intuitive and similar to many third-person or first-person games, and students immediately engaged with its mechanics. We used Sansar as a tool for additional Q&A sessions occurring on a different day from the formal studio sessions rather than Zoom or Microsoft Teams. More importantly, I also used it to casually check- in with students to ensure they were mentally and physically well with the strict lockdown conditions Melbourne was currently in at that time. It allowed students to be in a more relaxed atmosphere where they could informally discuss ideas but also practice verbally articulating and questioning their ideas where no drawings are present (Fig. 3).
To enable a simpler spatial pin-up format, the studio also trialled Kunstmatrix, an online platform that focuses on exhibiting art for collectors and art enthusiasts, explorable in first-person mode. 3D environment templates are available and creating custom environments was only available upon request. Instead of exhibiting art, our studio hacked it to showcase students’ mid- semester developmental work (as part of the Slow Crit) through polemic large- scale drawings representative of students’ ideas. The virtual exhibition space of Kunstmatrix also acted as the home page that linked the varying platforms used. The studio found that this platform was not as successful for discussing ideas or the pinning-up of weekly work as, it also became too cumbersome to set up for design studio parameters. However, it seemed to be well suited to specific studio cultural events such as formal reviews and final presentations,
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Figure 4: where a certain degree of preparation was required and possible (Fig. 4). Instead of an art collection, A useful feature though, is its ability to be easily viewable and explorable Kunstmatrix was ‘hacked’ via smartphone devices, allowing a wider range of people to easily view the as a platform for exhibiting students’ works as part of the content. mid-semester Slow Crit (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). Gaming and Massively Multiplayer Online worlds During the studio’s swift pedagogical explorations, one investigation led to the gamification of architecture. There was a particular interest in Massive Multiplayer Online gaming (MMO), where gamers can explore imaginative worlds in an infinite capacity – not necessarily trying to win the game.
Our consistent explorations with Sansar gave us a glimpse of how we might begin to embed such gaming potentials to a design studio by hacking custom gaming environment mechanics for architectural explorations and pedagogy (Fig. 5-6). Gaming environments allowed the studio a series of alternative methods in developing and communicating architecture and ideas. The idea of creating an open world where students’ propositions could be explored at 1:1 scale, gave students the challenge of ensuring their conceptual agendas bridged with the practical considerations of our project. This meant that both the theoretical groundings of the studio and our industry partner’s ambitions, had to be reconsidered. Students also had to consider that visitors could explore all parts of their architecture, exposing areas that were not considered or developed. This digital context also allowed us to, for the first time, question how we could not only show the ideas but also experience them in real-time; how we could communicate ideas beyond the production of traditional views and drawings by being able to give online tours of projects live. There is a new culture of dynamic architectural representation emerging
87 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 Figure 5: Hacking’ Sansar’s system logics to adapt its platform for architecture design studio sessions (Patrick Macasaet, 2020).
Figure 6: Early schematic tests on how students’ propositions could be embedded via Sansar as traversable and explorable 1:1 scale projects (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). from such environments and technologies that has already been evident in the discourse of architectural communication and representation. In the research project, Learning from Los Santos, Luke Caspar Pearson argues that as ‘games are so adept at exposing us to logic structures and making them comprehensible’, a ‘feeling of playing the game’ is necessary towards capturing the spirit of the city and acquiring a more accurate reading of its culture.21
In Sansar, students produced an abstract City of Gold that assembled all projects in one populated and curated virtual world open to the public (Fig. 7-8). Conceived as a series of 1:1 gold models and inspirited by an enthusiasm for MMOs, it was an entirely new format for both students and myself. The entire city was rendered in a single material to lessen the pressure of learning a new platform that was initially unplanned. Still, there were numerous challenges and technical issues such as extended loading times, mesh limits, collision layers, audio, and more were prevalent. Presentation formats also
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Figure 7: needed to be addressed as although we could technically pin-up, drawing Screenshot of the City of Gold quality and loading times were severely impacted. Lastly, there were also developed by the ‘After Type issues of ‘Virtual Wayfinding’ and accessibility issues. Chapter: RMIT Docklands Media Precinct’ design studio as the final arena for their The studio’s final presentations were held in this city with students and guests propositions - inviting the participating via their custom avatars (Fig. 9). The event was open to the public to explore and interact public and everyone had the ability to explore the world as they wished – they with (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). could either partake in the presentations or roam around and explore the Figure 8: ideas. All participants would assemble in each student’s 1:1 virtual building Aerial screenshot of the City and focused in presenting their final propositions via critical cinematic video of Gold with a student live presentations followed by participatory critique from reviewers (Figs. 10-11).22 presentation in progress The presentations were supplemented by project compendiums that included (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). detailed drawings, diagrams, design processes and an appendix of early explorations via Issuu. The compendiums were made available to all guests, days in advanced of the event. Due to technical difficulties with Sansar’s audio, students suggested the parallel use of Discord, a group-chatting platform that utilises text, voice and video chat originally built for gamers. Overall, this was a highly experiential and immersive event that gave delight and humour to an otherwise stressful occasion for students, especially in light of the added stress and anxiety brought about by the pandemic. More importantly, it was a highly engaging platform that allowed a new perspective on how architecture could be presented and communicated that still foregrounded discussions on exploratory architectural ideas, only this time, we could experience it dynamically and spatially in real-time.23
Hacker framework as a catalyst for architectural pedagogy Expeditiousness, tactical agility, venturousness and action are the characteristic keystones of a hacker framework and mindset that emerged within this context. The pandemic, in many ways, required us to reframe and reinvestigate how an architectural design studio could be led progressively in fast forward – grounded on ideas and engaged with the practical realities of the discipline. On reflection, the desire to maintain the immersive, didactic, discursive and collaborative culture characteristic to architectural education up to the pandemic, catalysed and ascertained the recognition of three key
89 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 Figure 9: Final Presentations briefing session with guests and students in the City of Gold via Sansar (Patrick Macasaet 2020).
Figure 10: Student presenting in their 1:1 building for the final presentations in Sansar (Patrick Macasaet 2020).
Figure 11: Student presenting in their 1:1 building for the final presentations in Sansar (Patrick Macasaet 2020).
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Figure 12: trajectories. These concern the potential, impact and value of gaming for Unreal Engine workshop led architecture design and its representation, communication and pedagogy, the by author via Discord in the possibility of alternative virtual models for key studio cultural events, and the second iteration of the studio, semester 2 2020. More formal overall value of a venturous mindset for students and tutors alike. game engines are now being explored with after initial experimentations with Sansar Gamification of architecture (Patrick Macasaet, 2020). The value of MMO gaming worlds as stages for architectural education, discourse and development played a significant role in the final presentations and how students developed their projects with the foresight that the majority of their propositions could be explored virtually at 1:1 scale. It also opened new avenues for further research towards exploring the potential of gaming in architecture as a key pedagogical pillar for the future of architectural education.
In the second iteration of the studio, students utilised games engines (Unreal Engine) in conjunction with film and animation as exploratory tools to experiment with architectural form, space, narrative and fictional worlds and unearth alternative propositions for future tertiary learning environments and their civic relationship with the city. Thus, the studio’s design development work foregrounded game engine based open-ended worlds as new pictorial and architectural spaces of production and design to establish new pipelines of design as a way of unearthing new realities (Fig.12). It allowed students to not only generate speculative architectural propositions, but also explore and design speculative fictional worlds that engage with contemporary concerns for the architecture is called to inhabit, with the ambition to further design
91 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 discourse and allow new thoughts of concerns and opportunities to surface. Figure 13: As examples, students speculated on a world embracing artificial intelligence In the second iteration of the studio, a digital Learning and mixed realities while some engaged with environmental questions and Event ‘Forum’ was organised asked how these could stir design discourse and practice away from the where students from the first traditional learning environments (i.e., informal/formal learning, porous semester were invited back to campus, etc). present their experiences and findings to the new cohort via the City of Gold. Pedagogical Beyond the studio, game engines also provide an opportunity into new discoveries from the first ways of disseminating architectural ideas to the wider public that might not semester were continually necessarily understand our architectural language of floor plans and sections, refined and implemented and into the realm of more accessible and experiential didactic environments. (Patrick Macasaet 2020). As stated by Jade Raymond, developments in next-gen gaming are pointing towards ‘an era of the internet of experiences’ where the hunt for information can be more of an interactive experience that allow people to play with driven- by-games and game-like experiences.24 An architectural education example of this can already be seen in Damjan Jovanovic’s ‘Supersurface’ first-person computer game, which ‘employs environmental, indirect and non-verbal forms of storytelling’.25 There, players are left to freely explore the environment and discover that ‘objects serve as portals that hold information’.26
Alternative models for cultural events Key school cultural events such as mid-semester crits and final presentations are important milestones in a semester’s timeline. Alternative models to these key events have always been discussed in architectural pedagogy, particularly in terms of what the next evolution of the crit could be. Our
Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 | 92 project experiences opened a whole new viewpoint on how crits could be virtually organised that capitalises on a much more accessible global community of practitioners and academics, taking advantage of the myriad of online platforms available to engender a more celebratory, productive, participatory and experiential learning event for all parties involved (Fig.13), perhaps particularly for reviewers, who can now more actively explore the designs and ideas dynamically and in real time rather than become passive observers.27 The most important aspect to maintain in the further developments of such events, is that students find them helpful for the progression of their projects and that they enter a fruitful discussion with guests.
Venturous hacker mindset In design studios, we encourage the mindset of being venturous, explorative and the value of failure in the pursuit of new and innovative ideas. In addition, we should continually nurture the speculative, experimental and risk-taking attributes of design studios to continually project alternative forms of knowledge and challenge their validity. As conveyed by Vivian Mitsogianni, ‘[we] should be educating students who engage in and contribute to a broader world of ideas and who are capable of challenging our ability to judge’.28 In the context of the studio discussed here, the hacker mindset was extended to not only ‘produce’ architecture but to catalyse the development of new pedagogical approaches in collaboration with students.
There were certainly failures and flaws in some tests that we had to abandon – as is to be expected with a venturous practice, but this endeavour also brought about many other ways of seeing and approaching architecture and architectural pedagogy in a virtual dimension that, in no doubt, could extend to our physical studio spaces. From the course’s formal Course Experience Survey (CES) student feedback, it was made evident that students valued and appreciated the studio’s approach in trialling new platforms to ensure the best experience and outcomes for the studio. Specifically, students commented that despite the number of platforms that were being tested, the integration with technology made the studio run seamlessly online, contrary to how they saw other studios be more hindered by it.
Future hacking The agile, culture-building, and venturous hacker mindset that emerged from this project, was not merely about hacking online platforms for architectural education and bringing them together, but also about how this mindset could catalyse an alternative approach to future architectural pedagogy that values expeditiousness, agility, venturousness and action, as a framework for advancing strategically and with purpose through a time of uncertainty. The digital pedagogic discoveries outlined in this paper, through the lens of a hacker mindset, were fuelled by a continuously intense and swift prototyping
93 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 of virtual potentials with rapid-fire responses from students. The design studio not only became a space to speculate on future tertiary learning environments but simultaneously acted as the space for future pedagogic speculation, bringing about new trajectories that would have otherwise been initially dismissed. Many of the teaching formats tested here, such as virtual pin-boards and the Slow Crit, will still have great value in the physical space as they did in the digital. More importantly, these explorations and the hacker mindset were born not purely because of the pandemic, but out of the aspiration to maintain an immersive, didactic, discursive and collaborative culture foregrounding transformative student experiences to unearth new realities and ideas. It is because of this alignment and affinity of the hacker mindset with the nature of architectural thinking as itself a venturous and creative process, that these applications will remain relevant.
Acknowledgements The work and findings published in this essay are the result of a Masters level industry-partnered and research-led design studio at RMIT Architecture in partnership with the RMIT Policy Strategy Impact team that took place in semester 1, 2020. I would like to thank all students personally for their efforts, open- mindedness, venturousness and motivation in this studio.
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REFERENCES 1 RMIT Architecture Associate Dean Professor Vivian Mitsogianni frequently articulates RMIT Architecture’s interests in venturous experimentation but also the attempt of its realisation in built form. RMIT University, 2021. Studying Architecture at RMIT | RMIT University [video]. Available at:
2 The RMIT Docklands Media Precinct commenced on March 3, 2020 and formal teaching concluded on June 11, 2020. At the time of writing, the second iteration was completed in Semester 2, 2020. The second iteration was co-led with Vei Tan.
3 RMIT Architecture design studios are vertically integrated. Every semester design studios are curated by Design Studio Coordinators and selected design studio leaders present to students at a Balloting Presentation event before the start of semester. Students then ‘vote’ for their preferred studio within the Bachelor and Masters program. Each design studio is a mixture of students from different year levels but within each program (eg. Masters studios have a mixture of masters students at various year levels and similar for Bachelors).
4 Pete Herzog, ‘For the Love of Hacking’,
5 Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal, ‘Introduction—The Hacker, the City and Their Institutions: From Grassroots Urbanism to Systemic Change’, in The Hackable City: Digital Media and Collaborative City-Making in the Network Society, ed. by Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 1-17 (p.2).
6 Herzog, p. 2.
7 ‘Research in the medium’ is a term coined by Emeritus Professor Leon van Schaik to refer to the RMIT Design Practice Research Program, which he originated over 30 years ago, see van L Scaik and A Johnson (eds.), By Practice, By Invitation: Design Practice Research in Architecture and Design at RMIT 1986-2011 (Melbourne: onepointsixone, 2011).
8 School Retool. ,
9 Mark Hofer and Lindy L. Johnson, ‘How the Hack Mindset Can Foster Innovation in Schools’, Educational Leadership, 74 (2017), 52-6.
10 Hacker Highschool (n.d.),
11 Maya Wizel, ‘Preparing Educational Hackers’, in Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development, ed. by Yehudith Weinberger and Zipora
95 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 Libman (London: IntechOpen, 2018).
12 A teaching set up that subverts the social order of design studios to non- hierarchical structures highlighting an alternative studio culture that begins to position students as ‘student-practitioners’ that are able to contribute to new forms of knowledge produced through design studios. See Edmund Carter and John Doyle, ‘Peer-To-Peer Pedagogy/Practice’, in Studio Futures : Changing Trajectories in Architectural Education, ed. by Donald Bates, Vivian Mitsogianni and Diego Ramirez-Lovering (Warrandyte North: Uro Publications, 2015), 33-8 (p.38).
13 Tom Wujec, ‘Build a Tower, build a team’ [online video recording], TED, February 2010,
14 Conceptboard
15 During the RMIT Architecture End of Semester Virtual Exhibitions for semesters 1 and 2 2020, several design studios utilised ConceptBoard to exhibit students’ projects. View more via: https://rmitarchitecture-exhibition.net/.
16 Matthew Celmer, ‘Teaching architecture online; Transitioning from the physical studio to the virtual studio’,
17 Learning Events is an ongoing research project by the author that has been in progress since 2017. The term describes strategically embedded episodes within a studio semester that enhance student experience through a collaborative engagement alongside multiple collaborators with the studio cohort. They act as amplifiers, transformers and enablers of alternative perspectives of knowledge to empower the possibilities for innovation.
18 The Slow Crit is conceived as the antithesis to the ‘Speed Crit’, another invention of my own that involves rapid one- to-one sessions between students and guests. See more via the Instagram account supercale
19 Ari Seligmann, ‘Review, Reflect Recalibrate’, inStudio Futures: Changing Trajectories in Architectural Education, ed. by Donald Bates, Vivian Mitsogianni and Diego Ramirez-Lovering (Warrandyte North: Uro Publications, 2015), 141-6 (p.142).
20 Now owned by Wookey Project Corp as of 23 March 2020. Linden Lab were also the developers of Second Life.
21 Luke C. Pearson, ‘A machine for playing in: Exploring the videogame as a medium for architectural design’, Design Studies, 66 (2020), 113-43 (p.124).
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22 Jules Moloney, ‘Videogame Technology Re-Purposed: Towards Interdisciplinary Design Environments for Engineering and Architecture’, in Proceedings of The 1st International Design Technology Conference, DESTECH2015, Geelong, ed. by Guy Littlefair and others (Geelong: Procedia Technology, 2015), 212-8.
23 View final projects from the After Type Chapter Series at
24 Damjan Jovanovic, ‘Anticipating the Digital: The Game of Supersurface’, in Re- Imagining the Avant-Garde, ed. by Matthew Butcher and Luke C. Pearson (Newark: John Wiley & Sons, 2019), 122-7 (p.127)
25 Jovanovic, p.127.
26 Moloney, p.213.
27 Vivian Mitsogianni, ‘Failure can be Cathartic!’, in Studio Futures: Changing Trajectories in Architectural Education, ed. by Donald Bates, Vivian Mitsogianni and Diego Ramirez-Lovering (Warrandyte North: Uro Publications, 2015), 25-32 (p. 31).
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