This was a student project by Simon Beskitt for Curtis Roth's course ARCH 8410 in Autumn 2018. This project is a video game based upon Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of Klee’s Angelus Novus and the infamous first-person-shooter franchise DOOM. Taking place in the storm in which the angel finds itself, the player is given an arsenal of weapons to construct a monument from the wreckage. Through the use of conventional first-person-shooter gaming mechanics, the player is able to seek out canonical works of architecture, destroy them, collect their pieces, and build a new aggregate work from them. Upon completion of the game, the player’s construction is exported as a 3D model file and catalogued into an archive. It is up to the players to find the buildings available, destroy and collect what they will, and construct something pleasing to them with limited control. The game attempts to question the means by which the discipline is able to be critiqued and examines a number of aspects of both the critical discipline and profession, including networking, long-distance design collaboration, and historical reverence as well as contemporary trends such as kitbashing. By making myriad references to both architectural discourse and contemporary video game culture (from Le Corbusier, Koolhaas and Palladio to DOOM, Fortnite and Half Life), the game also explores the boundary between number of quotations and the meaning each retains. The archive of creations exposes both similarity and difference among designs made with limited components and control. Free Game Download: https://walterbenjamin.itch.io/for-ava
