Paper short abstract:

The Great Game is a simulation environment designed for architectural pedagogy, which consists of situating students in controversies about space and its transformation. Building on past experimentation, we argue why the Great Game is an attempt, in the making, to perform STS epistemologies.

Paper long abstract:

Architectural design education has a long tradition of taking place in ateliers. In these spaces of practice are embedded epistemologies that express a certain conception of design but also of the world, and how, as a consequence, the former can affect the latter. Students thus learn within conditions that reflect these conceptions, often working, paraphrasing Lefebvre, on parts of spaces cut out of larger ensembles, imitations that claim to objectively grasp the world through a drawing. For the past four years, we have been conducting a didactic experiment called The Great Game, which consists of intervening in such conceptions to modify the traditional atelier model. The theoretical frame of reference from which we have moved can be traced back to STS: distributed agency, the project as a sociotechnical object, controversies as sites of discovery and action. The aim is to not reduce larger ensembles within drawings, but to make drawings act within larger ensembles. We present features and rules of the Great Game through the materials used and produced in these few years, to evaluate the advantages and limitations of the simulation in which we place our students.