The Ludanarium: Architectural Exploration in a Game of Blocks

This graduate project investigates the role of games and play in the architectural design process, examining how game mechanics can mirror, and even enhance, the ways designers think, create, and collaborate. Games are not only accessible and intuitive tools, but they also foster experimentation, surprise, and imagination. These qualities make them powerful platforms for rethinking design: they lower the barriers to entry, promote collaborative problem-solving, and introduce unexpected spatial outcomes that can spark new architectural insights. The project centers on a construction-based game that bridges physical and digital environments. Players interact with modular wooden blocks on a physical grid, while an integrated digital system—built using Unity—tracks these movements in real time. The result is a hybrid tool where every physical action is mirrored in a dynamic digital world. This live translation between mediums allows players to explore their constructions from new angles, experiment with scale, and discover emergent relationships between form, gesture, and perspective. Unlike traditional architectural software, this open-ended construction game encourages freeform play while also functioning as a design tool. Its hybrid nature offers practical advantages: players can use the digital feedback to navigate, refine, or reinterpret their physical builds. Whether used for imaginative world-building or collaborative spatial design, the game supports multiple modes of engagement and reflects a growing need for tools that seamlessly integrate physical and digital workflows. By treating play as a form of design thinking, this thesis contributes to emerging conversations around gamification in architecture, hybrid AR tools, and participatory spatial practices. It argues that when construction is approached through playful, open-ended systems, designers and non-designers alike can engage more fully in the creative process—and reimagine what architecture can be.