HUGO LOYDELL 2018-19 YEAR 3

The Ludo-haptic Research Studio

The ‘Ludo-haptic Research Studio’ traverses the divide between Ludology, the study of the users experience within a videogame and the haptics and sensory phenomena we are familiar with in our reality. To facilitate the research, the studio is in the process of developing a videogame based on the traditional Finnish short story, ‘The Year of the Hare’. Specific sensory moments in its narrative are enacted in the architecture and tested by the studio, with the data observed being fed back into the ongoing development of their videogame.
After the studio acquires an abandoned residential property in Helsinki, known to them as ‘the white house’, they begin their research within the confines of this existing structure. As the studio progresses though their research into the ludo-haptic, the existing white house begins to alter and change, as the research spreads beyond its confines. This requires a building with the capacity for a procedural construction understanding, based upon an evolving narrative, taking inspiration from the procedural nature of many videogames. By nature of such a task, challenges will appear when taking the seemingly random notion of ‘procedural’ and rationalising it structurally to cope with the unique architectural development presented when we allow this research to command the direction and composition of a design.

Tutors: Thomas Pearce, Greg Storrar