Mischa Culhane
University of Auckland
First up representing UoA, we have Mischa Culhane who is taking an alternative approach to his architectural thesis by developing a video game based off his own drawings and art! Read on to learn more…
Student Architecture Network New Zealand: What is your thesis about
Mischa Culhane: I am creating a video game that engages with a drawing methodology to question the way we interface with digital space. It is a way to critique the predominant mode of designing in a computer.
SANNZ: What have you been up to the past month with it?
MC: Drawing heaps! I had an art exhibition at school. The work recombined drawings with existing spatial conditions from those drawings. From there I inputed those drawings into a game engine called ‘Game Maker Studio’ and now I’ve been trying to inhabit the drawing through the medium of the video game. It is a 2D focused program, not 3D at all. Like one of those role playing games from back in the 90s: top down and orthogonal. The emphasis has been on narrative in drawing.
SANNZ: I guess different games each privilege a different view, like in an architectural drawings, be it plan, elevation, section. It is the ‘god’s eye’ act of seeing, versus the perspective type you see more now.
MC: Yes everything is laid out in that Cartesian XYZ axis, in this complete Euclidean rational space of the orthogonal drawing.
SANNZ: Who will play this? Will you distribute this game?
MC: It depends how far I get into it, hopefully I will have a playable demo then launch a Kickstarter page and try drum up some interest and hopefully some funding.
SANNZ: What is going to inform the narrative? Or what you do in the game?
MC: It is based heavily on another video game called Undertale, it came out last year. It is a role playing game where you don’t have to kill anyone, you just befriend everyone and then you overcome everything with the power of friendship, it is really cheesy and beautiful and I love it.
SANNZ: Do you see this contributing to our understanding of ‘Architecture’ (with a capital A)?
MC: By creating a video game I was hoping to investigate the tools we use to design, CAD and other software. It is super based on XYZ axis, but in the digital space there is no real sense of materiality, there is no such thing as gravity, the laws that govern reality are completely different to the digital world, and that is why I find it quite strange that we are always designing within that space. There are certain things in architecture you can’t represent within the digital space and I don’t see why we keep going into the digital space to design. Through the drawing I am hoping to ground myself, bring some sort of physicality and bring that into the digital world, and build up an architecture around that.
SANNZ: Who is your supervisor and why did you choose them?
MC: I’m working with Lynda Simmons. We had all these really interesting conversations concerning the role of drawing in the design of architecture so I picked her and she picked me.
SANNZ: What do you want to do next year?
MC: It is fully dependent on how far this game goes, and how the Kickstarter goes. Because even though I love architecture, I really do want to try my hand in the video game industry and get myself out there. It is possible to use this game as a portfolio piece to apply at firms but my main desire is to really work my ass off and have a product at the end of this.
