An Architectural Experience with Zaha Hadid Architects and Epic Games: ‘Re:Imagine London’

Zaha Hadid Architects and Epic Games have collaborated to develop 'Re:Imagine London', a creative game project that aims to explore architecture, urban planning, interiors and sustainability in Fortnite through an interactive gaming experience.

Re:Imagine London is a creative experience played in Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games.

Using Epic Games’ Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), Re:Imagine London has been jointly developed by Zaha Hadid Architects and Epic Games to research the use of UEFN for practical applications in architecture and to pool creator talent across industries including architecture, landscape, and interiors.

Published by Epic Labs, Re:Imagine London is a creator-made island in Fortnite, providing an interactive experience which highlights UEFN’s capabilities in Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) based on content provided by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), AccuCities, and Beyond Creative.

The project continues ongoing research applications by ZHA’s Computation and Design Group (ZHACODE) in urban planning, platform design, spatial content creation, configurators, user experience design, and future twins.

Re:Imagine London explores London as a cooperative multiplayer experience in the genre of strategy-builder games with an educational component. Situated around London’s waterfronts, the project investigates urban intensification and community participation in the creation of walkable, mixed-use, sustainable development.

The experience facilitates rapid optioneering through an engaging and exploratory approach to negotiating the complexities of the urban condition to build collaboratively in a contemporary context.

The build content within Re:Imagine London is crafted in various scales as pre-composed spatial scenes, expressing architectural, geometric, and spatial features consistent with ZHA’s built works while contributing to the planning and constructional awareness of configured solutions.

The modules incorporate recent advances in construction technologies, while also showcasing a parametric approach to environmental and contextual performance though typological variation, as well as gradated and volumetric lighting, and material effects.

Re:Imagine London can be accessed by downloading Fortnite to the desired platform and searching for ‘Re:Imagine London’ or ‘1442-4257-4418’ in the game.

For more information on the development of Re:Imagine London, click here.

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