20.000 BLOCKS

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20.000 BLOCKS is a framework for collaborative design built on Minecraft where architects and players can create buildings and cities together in a collaborative, creative process.

The framework allows the creation of architectural games where players are given a goal and insufficient resources to achieve it. They advance in the game by building shapes out of Minecraft blocks, choosing from a predefined catalogue of architectural items. While players compete to reach the goal, a building emerges out of the shapes that they have built. Player creations can be exported to Rhino/Grasshopper for further analysis or to be turned into wooden models by our UR10 robot Ginger.

Our team used 20.000 BLOCKS to create the IBA_GAME for IBA Heidelberg. 20.000 BLOCKS has been published in Wired Germany and featured on the TV channel ARTE. The project has been presented at events and conferences around the world such as CEBIT, SmartGeometry, ACADIA and the World Design Symposium.

20.000 BLOCKS is developed by Anton Savov within his research on crowdsourced and massively-collaborative design at the DDU. Ben Buckton has contributed significantly to 20.000 BLOCKS both conceptually and in code.

Team

Project leader: Anton Savov

Ben Buckton

Jörg Hartmann

Sebastian Kotterer

Ginger The Robot Arm

Publications and Projects

You can learn more about the project in the publications:

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Savov, Anton; Tessmann, Oliver

Introduction to Playable Voxel-Shape Grammars

Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), pp. 534–543, Cambridge, 2017.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330546116_Introduction_to_Playable_Voxel-Shape_Grammars

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Savov, Anton; Buckton, Ben; Tessmann, Oliver

20,000 Blocks: Can gameplay be used to guide non-expert groups in creating architecture?

ACADIA 2016: POSTHUMAN FRONTIERS: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines [Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA)], pp. 24–33, Ann Arbor, 2016.

http://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/acadia16_24.pdf (opens in new tab)

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As well is in the student work:

HABITAT 1000, Digital Design Studio, Summer Term 2018

HABITAT 1000

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Rui Nong

Assembly with Robots

Link: https://ddu-research.com/assembly-with-robots/

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Nicolas Ceulaers, Mingquan Ding, Timotheus Krzywik

URBAN MINEOPOLIS

Link: https://ddu-research.com/urban-mineopolis/