PLAY, SETTINGS, QUIT

This research/thesis project investigates how rule-based game mechanics, implemented through VR and real-time game engines, can mediate and transform the experience of the real – in my case, familiar architectural environments. By overlaying alternative spatial rules onto the existing structure of the Angewandte Schwanzer Wing, the project examines how digital interventions disrupt habitual movement patterns, reconfigure spatial legibility, and challenge the stability of architectural meaning. It studies the intersection of architectural space and video game design, it adopts games as a method for working with spatial rules, circulation patterns, and systems of value, rather than using games only as stories or problem-solving tools. This becomes especially relevant in the context of an expanding gaming culture and the growing use of spatial-computing technologies which mediate spatial experiences. These conditions enable physical architecture and its virtual counterparts to coexist, overlap, and mutually inform one another. Architecture is therefore reconsidered not as a static physical container, but as a dynamic and adaptable “playground,” capable of being reauthored through shifting rules, player agency, and alternative spatial scenarios.