Swedish architecture firm, Equator, has recreated a Stockholm site in Minecraft, and invited players to submit designs for a tall building on the site in order to generate ideas of what future urban living may look like. In an interesting twist of life imitating games imitating life, this input is being sought for the firm’s own competition submission for the site in the real world.
Crowdsourcing has been used in science for well over a decade and a recent Penn Medicine Study has confirmed the promise of accelerating medical research through “Human Computing Power.” In the last five years, numerous websites have emerged to crowdsource design solutions from artists, designers and copywriters at competitive prices. Still, the use of massively multiplayer online games, to produce real world solutions, is relatively new.
Such usage is accelerating, and I suppose that, if clients can crowdsource designs from architects and designers through competitions and websites like cocontest, why shouldn’t an architect crowdsource design ideas from the general public? Poring through submissions may be a colossal waste of time, but could one good idea make it all worthwhile?
Do you suppose Minecraft retains any of the intellectual property rights…?
Read the article on Wired UK: Architecture firm holds competition in Minecraft.
The next step is for the client to crowdsource the ideas directly. Then the architect can just draft the plans.. 😉