Scripting Cultures: Architectural Design and Programming

Chapter 9

Scripting narrative space: Our World and The Third Policeman

Thus far Scripting Cultures has presumed a coded analogy with the physical world. With our ability to augment design digitally using time as a function – whether as an animated simulation of performative architecture¹ or for an enriched iterative experimentation in ideas – we have reached a new level of architectural sophistication, one without precedent. As a virtual design companion scripting can assist the designer to escape reality constraints through immersion in cyberspace. With carefully thought through protocols the designer can interoperate as a collaborator within large virtual teams, potentially anonymous in terms of authorship but vital co-contributors all the same. Their individual input can be crucial and the whole team interdependent: remove any one of the worker bees from this hive and it no longer functions.

Building Our World

This chapter draws on one such hive, Our World, which serves two unrelated purposes. Firstly, Our World is an analogy for ‘our world’ – one of identifying and staying within particular domains, a condition of our propensity to place a boundary around what we regard as being ‘in’ to the exclusion of everything else. Our World is a metaphor, then, for the working environment of the curator, and considers their custodianship on behalf of the interests of others, looking after collections ranging from objects to concepts. Secondly, and quite inadvertently, Our World offers ...