sérgio miguel de sousa lopes figueiredo

space fighter, the evolutionary city (game:)

1.1 applicationsBerlage Institute

space fighter, the evolutionary city (game:)by MVRDV/DSD in collaboration with the Berlage Institute, MIT and cThrough

0.1 setup (warm up games)Berlage Institute

0.0 theoryDelft School of Design

1.0 systemBerlage Institute

space-fighter diagram



SpaceFighter: the evolutionary city game Winy Maas (director of MVRDV)

entropia: energy and regional survival Arthur van Bilsen, Brent Batstra, Camilo Pinilla (PhD students at DSD)

evolutionary urbanismBrent Batstra

evolutionary games and architecture Arthur van Bilsen

emergent urbanism Camilo Pinilla

urban mapping: tactical games or critical theories Arie Graafland (Director of DSD)



- SpaceFighter reflects the inevitable and total surrender towards a process-oriented approach leading to a city that can reformulate itself, a city that is conscious of its gained knowledge was already identified in KM3

- technological facilities have allowed cities and regions to communicate and trade (interact) better through newly developed global infrastructures creating a global urban network leading regions to compete, clash or adapt in order to survive in the constantly changing global arena

- SpaceFighter tries to model the complexity of time-based competitive urban developments, reflecting and compar-ing imaginable, forecasted, interactive urban processes, actions and reactions, generating outcomes unimaginable before hand, as it absorbs new knowledge, or even better creates it

- SpaceFighter connects the biological model with urbanistic reality, showing the evolution of urban space

scenario creation software



- initially most games are played by intuition but once the user becomes more experienced through practice, intuition makes way for strategies and tactics

- emergence requires the rapid adaptation, mutation and exploitation of all available means

- SpaceFighter wants to stimulate the planning aspects of all (possible) databanks, encouraging them to move from static to progressive data

- This combination of different datasets can generate new insights, perhaps not new for a computer, but may very well be new for the user, thus generating and testing more than the sum total of all the data

evolutionary city diagram


entropia: energy and regional survival by Arthur van Bilsen, Brent Batstra, Camilo Pinilla (PhD students at DSD)

- most studies and tools studying the urban phenomenon take snapshots of situations and are static, but due to the current technological developments urban enquiry can move to a dynamic-oriented perspective.

- SpaceFighter takes an evolutionary standpoint, considering regions as systems (or living creatures) and analyses “regional survival” as a problem of energy management - Entropia

- by applying the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we realize that regional and living systems share a need for energy and a need for negentropy

- if nothing is done, a region (like a chair) will degenerate and decompose, unless we maintain it or even adapt it to new contexts. These actions are energy investment used to keep the region functional

energy loss diagram hypothetical energy concentration map


- urban settlements are more commonly intertwined networks embedded in larger levels of organization

- in order to survive regions must import energy, and preserve energy efficiently, but the existence of local attractors is also instrumental

- by visualizing energy (through parametrising different types and intensities) we can understand the nature (energy types) and extent (action spaces) of the efforts for survival of a region

- a regional intervention is an energy impulse that attempts to bring urban region into more desirable states

- SpaceFighter game becomes an educational tool; acquiring knowledge of how the regional/global system works by redirecting energy

entropia: energy and regional survival by Arthur van Bilsen, Brent Batstra, Camilo Pinilla (PhD students at DSD)

negentropy diagram


evolutionary urbanism by Brent Batstra (PhD student at DSD)

- notions of survival and energy establish a common language for living and non-living entities, which can be theo-rized based on evolution theory and physics

- the development of species can also be considered an algorithm of perfecting as ratios-based calculations which have been incorporated into living entities

- due to the ever-increasing speed of change and complexity in both the local field and global level, old methods and instruments of planning and urbanism fail. SpaceFighter provides an alternative as a structure open to anyone which also accommodates political options, only focused on production (rather than theoretical study)

- data and data processors are now used to construct plausible scenarios, leading neighborhoods, cities and regions in making the best decisions

- three options for using the computer in architecture and urbanism are proposed, namely 1) the computer as gen-erator of plausible scenarios, 2) the computer as heuristic device, 3) the computer as learning device

archigram, moving city


evolutionary urbanism by Brent Batstra (PhD student at DSD)

- Virtually everything can be squeezed into one form of data or another, as informatisation is the emergent existence space of our time, thus the world became smaller and more within our grasp

- evolving systems derive and relie their selectivity from certain feedback loops of information from the environment, either natural (feedback) or artificial (feed forward)

- feed-forward selection is always concerned with expectations, and future situations, therefore it is necessary to understand the weakness of ‘predictions’, and strength of the evolutionary ways ‘relatively insensitive systems’ and ‘feedback adjustments’

- once hypothesis arise on selection pressures on the success and decay of regions, they must be checked on differ-ent levels (of evolutionary selection)

- our sense of beauty relies on a long evolutionary history of ancestors, therefore we can equalize economics and aesthetics in a single energy-cost-benefit calculation which can be applied to urbanism and architecture

archigram, moving city


evolutionary games and architecture Arthur van Bilsen (PhD student at DSD)

- game theory perspective has the potential to reshape the analysis of human interaction and can be an unifying framework for the social sciences

- breaking a complex system into its conflicting players, allows for an understanding of the system’s complexity, simplifying the practice of design (a cyclic process containing both analysis and synthesis)

- a balance between stifling order and destructive chaos is achieved by applying Game Theory at the interface, point-ing out the (best) strategy at a given situation by corresponding each player’s actions with a score

- rules are only the frames in which agents of the game operate

- It is possible for simple rules to yield innovative results through the evolutionary algorithm

simple rules give complex systems


emergent urbanism Camillo Pinilla (PhD student at DSD)

- in response to modern’s life complexity, science is increasingly dedicated to the study of organization, such as Sys-tems Theory which analyzes the relationships and components in relation to a surrounding environment

- the system-environment perspective also helps to explain change and offer particular strategies for adaptation which organisms take in order to survive in an environment (specially an adverse one)

- there are three stages in the development of complexity of systems as the number of elements increases 1) orderly, 2) disorganized complexity, 3)organized complexity (when patterns emerge)

- the combination of individual actions generate outcomes which can only be perceived from the perspective as a whole - Emergence

definition of a system according to chadwick


emergent urbanism Camillo Pinilla (PhD student at DSD)

- the possibilities for forming relationships are growing exponentially, supported by theories explaining how the world shrinks and production shifts to more flexible modes of accumulation

- communication technologies change the way places relate to one another, by building connections and detachments between them, which is often referred as ‘shrinking of world’ or ‘blurring of boundaries’

- in emergent urbanism no global centre of power dictates development, but the dynamic interactions of parts, par-ticipant actors and their relations are felt at varied hierarchical levels

- computers can run different simulations on diagramming, decision-making, prediction and optimization techniques, helping to find fast and varied solutions

conceptions of spatial configuration


urban mapping: tactical games or critical theoriesby Arie Graafland (Director of DSD)

- several offices have incorporated new ways of working, either by creating partnerships with other offices to carry out assignments or by publishing office work as research-related interface, leading to new research methods

- the link between the modernization of work processes and the exhaustion of Critical Theory is not clear, as Critical Theory remained in the realms of academic disciplines and has never played a major role in daily office practice

- what is necessary is a ‘reflexive architecture’, which addresses architecture’s foundations reflexively paired with the digitized work processes

- Speaks is trying to promote a few Dutch and American offices to the forefront of contemporary practice, based on an organizational and instrumental argument which no longer assesses the outcomes of those designs, but only their process, which is not quite a completely ‘new’ position

AMO, new EU flag MVRDV, pig city



- aesthetic reflexivity has recently found an important place in the production and consumption of the culture indus-tries as we are no longer dealing with reflexive subjects, but objects as contemporary culture accepts representa-tions in place of objects

- critical in social theory and philosophy is problematic and is not easily related to a projective aesthetic practice like architecture

- what remains relevant is that the most advanced research in architecture and urbanism is being produced in col-laboration between professional practice and the academy (Koolhas, Maas or Herzog are affiliated with GSD, DSD and Berlage or ETH as researchers, and not as design studio instructors

- the pragmatist attitude which holds Richard Rorty and Gilles Deleuze together is their ontologically situated dispo-sition towards action, practice and movement

complexity in urban systems



- the traditional concepts of town and country are thus transformed into an ‘aggregate state’

- the dynamics in our present day society are too complex to grasp in models based on ideal types (like Region maker and Climatizer), but SpaceFighter addresses an interactive process beyond scenario writing

- there is no metropolis in either Switzerland or the Netherlands, but there is a process of urbanization producing centrality and generic fields at the same time

- MVRDV’s research is a digital practice, (distinct from their architectural projects that are by definition ‘tectonic’), questioning the authority of place and space: dematerialization and non-location are the issues

- SpaceFighter is a projective endeavor, projecting problems and possible solutions into a near and sometimes dis-tant future, suggesting an overview while producing (Speaks’) provisional and incomplete interpretations by gather-ing ‘inteligence’ and never aimed at theoretical knowledge

los angeles, urban aggregate state



entropyregions are comparable to surviving systems where energy losses, accumulations and uses are observable

evolutiona parallel can be drawn from regional survival and the development of species, namely the (inherent) perfecting ratios-based calculatios which have been incorporated into living entities (by evolution)

complexitycontemporary life is based in complexity, which can be approached by a simplification and understanding of ele-ments which compose it on different levels

game theorygames can be used to gain insight in complex systems. In SpaceFighter concepts such as player, strategy, payoff, complexity and predictability are applied to architecture and urban planning

multiple scenariosthe possibility of multiple scenarios allows planners and decision makers to realize that there is no one absolute truth, but several different possibilities or scenarios


previous devicesMVRDV

the function mixerenables municipalities, inhabitant groups and planners to compose an optimized mixed neighborhood

function mixer depending on the focus, different combinations emerge



access optimizeroptimizes in detail the relation between the physical structure of the city and its infrastructure

access optimizer the results are visualized in different ways



the infra makeran investigation in the complexity of infrastructure and mobility

several transport infrastructures connecting different hubs



the region makerenables regional planning authorities, municipalities and action groups to discuss and visualize possible regions

region maker new patterns for regions emerge



the evolutionary citythe inevitable and total surrender towards a process-oriented approach leading to a city that can reformulate itself, a city that is conscious of its gained knowledge

evolutionary city diagram



developer everyone is a city-maker! You are a city-maker if you are a developer... Maximize cost-benefit, to ensure the highest rate of return investments

different sequences lead to different scores after some rounds, progress is evaluated



hub maker a game of social interaction, operating from regional to global scale, where players are set free to interact, fight, grow and die

it is possible to make more or less efficinet systems social groups interact in many ways



ID seeker the player compiles the identity of an entity through discovering its rules, which are unknown at start. Everyone is unique, everyone creates a specific identity

each player makes the rules for his competitor fill up the platform by discovering the hidden rules



market satisfier the aim is to organize a company in the most efficient way, adapting to constantly changing market conditions. the city results from the correspondence between singular desires and performance as a whole

interaction rules different strategies



opportunity seeker players have to naviagate a (three-dimensional) field to find and use resources and elements that are dispersed within a field of opportunities

resources and their qualities every cell in the field is surrounded by an aura of opportunities



synergiser the aim is to operate on land-use management, and understanding the possible negative side-effects it induces, by relating this this process to a taxation system

intensity of land use and proxinity to network lines evaluation is expressed in a payoff matrix



spacefighter platformplays a central role in assembling the individual games, the players and their common environment. Allows for new games to be inserted, defines the rules of conversation between the games and how rules between games will change based on user data created by playing the game

4 players and 3 games connected index database



pixels, the representational dilemmathe three dimensional pixel becomes a practical solution in terms of representation as it subdivides space and introduces boundaries

global scale block and city scale



detroit (observation)a city planner from Detroit accesses SpaceFighter to check public opinion regarding the planning process, before making important decisions

pixelized present detroit



detroit (observation)he also consideres relevant data about the city and region of Detroit, which will greatly influence the decision-mak-ing process.

finding and dowloading data



detroit (observation)finally, the planner, toggles between some minigames and checks the resulting projections on different scales

projections



rome (listing)by playing at different difficulty levels, the platform is suitable for entertainment, learning, education and research

pixelized past rome



rome (listing)a user can selected from a chronology of all previous and current scenarios and check in depth comparisons of data influencing the game

selecting scenario



rome (listing)the player can then decide if he wants to continue playing with more challenging conditions

end report



dubai (gaming)different players and interactions with different games in the system generate different outcomes

pixelated present dubai



dubai (gaming)as the game progresses senior players can change the basic conditions by adding more complex scenarios, like global warming, leading to a change of strategy by the players

change in scenario change in strategy



dubai (gaming)however swift local response might be, the change of scenario also works on a global level, which naturally has implications locally. all the levels are intertwined in SpaceFighter

global and local implications



dubai (gaming)several different oucomes are possible and are gained knowledge assisting in the decision making process

adaptation termination

sérgio miguel de sousa lopes figueiredo · - mvrdv’s research is a digital practice, (distinct...

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