Game Show Theatre '26

Welcome to the Game Show Theatre

Over the next nine days we will reimagine and recreate classic international game shows as spatial installations, turning the Lab into a working Game Show Theatre. We open to the public at 18:00 on Friday, 18 September.

You will work in a team of ten, on one game, in one of five elements. You will learn to use the workshops through the Essentials courses, you will design by making, and on the final night your team's game will be played by our guests.

The brief

Marshall McLuhan wrote that the medium is the message: that the consequences of any technology come from the change of scale, pace, or pattern it introduces, rather than from the content it carries. Consider the tools, technologies, and materials you use here as media. What are the media through which you create and represent architecture? Which will you use in this project? How do they shape what you make?

Bernard Tschumi wrote that architecture cannot be separated from the events that happen in it, and that every project must question the way it is notated. A game show is a set of rules, a space, and an event, all at once. That is the whole of the brief: build the space that makes the event possible.

The rules

• Spatialise. Occupy the space. Make a spatial installation, not an object on a table.
• Simplify. Make it quick and easy for the host and the players.
• Capture the essence. We must recognise the game.
• Movement. Energise it. Make it kinetic.
• Event. Orchestrate a moment.
• Sustainability. You may bring carbon, materials, energy, or technique into the game play itself.
• Keep it fair.

Each team has a site of one sheet, 2440mm by 1220mm.

Materials

Reduce, reuse, and recycle, in that order. Always check the reuse stations first. Transform what you find so that it can be used again. Use as little material as you can, and make the most of what you use.

Each team has a materials budget and a machine time budget, confirmed at the introduction on the first morning.

The nine days

The build days are yours, not the public's. Here they are in full.

A few notes on how the days work.

Essentials. Woodshop, metalshop, casting, laser, and CNC Essentials run through the first five days. Complete them as early as you can: they are what make the workshops yours to use for the rest of the week.

Tutorials run in two groups, Red and Blue, in the mornings from Friday onwards. Your tutor is a member of the Lab Team.

The work stages run 1. Research, 2. Concept designs, 3. Material and process experimentation, 4. Prototype one, 5. Prototype two, and 6. Production. Start making on day one. Sketch in card, test small, work on parts rather than wholes, master one before you make many, and leave time to polish.

Optional. Game show research runs from 18:30 on Monday 14 September in the Materials Lab.

The fabrication freeze is 16:00 on Thursday 17 September. It is a hard stop. After it, the day is installation, clear up, and preparing to receive visitors.

Themes and teams

Nine games, nine teams, nine architect muses. Each team has five elements, and each element has two people.

The five elements are:

• A. Narrative, the rules, the instructions, and the story.
• B. Stage, the set and the site.
• C. Call, the prompt or the question.
• D. Response, the action or the answer.
• E. Mise-en-scene, production: setting, sound, light, and projection.

Choose a game, an element, and a partner on the first morning, then sign up. If you do not get your first choice, it matters less than you think: what counts is how you make the event.

Augmented reality and projection

Five of the game's moments are carried by projection and augmented reality: the invitation to play, the call to make a decision, the game play and its progress, the celebration, and the making of. Video is edited in DaVinci Resolve and projection mapped onto your installation.

The Lab's quick start guide to projection mapping is available to you, and the Lab Team will run you through DaVinci Resolve during the week. Ask any Technologist on the floor.

Film and edit as you go

Record your progress from the first day. The footage you shoot this week is what you will cut into your projection videos, and it is what goes onto the media walls on the final night.

Your making video

Each team makes one making video for the media walls on opening night: 9:16 vertical, thirty seconds at most, and everyone in the team on screen if you can manage it.

Hand it to a member of the Lab Team before the fabrication freeze. Uploading it yourself, from this page, is coming.

The final night

The Game Show Theatre opens at 18:00 on Friday, 18 September. It is a hard deadline.

• 17:30 Doors open, and refreshments are served.
• 18:00 The Game Show Theatre opens, and the judges begin to play.
• 19:30 The winners are announced.
• 20:30 Close.

The dress code is black tie.

Guests. You are welcome to invite friends and family, and they must book in advance. The ticket link goes out with the invitation. They will need to show their ticket at campus reception to get into the building. This is the one evening tickets are for, and they are for external guests only: you and the Team do not need one.

Judging and prizes. Our guest judges play each game in turn, taking about five minutes on each. The categories are best event or game, technical and material excellence, best team, and best player.

Submission

A concise A3 digital portfolio, as a PDF, submitted in January. It covers the team project through your own contribution to it, and it should show your fabrication knowledge across the materials you worked in, your material investigation and experimentation, your craft and manufacturing skill, your spatial imagination and installation design, the realisation of the event, your reading of the theory behind it, and the quality of the documentation itself.

Working in the Lab

We employ MArch students each year as Lab Assistants. We provide the training, we arrange shifts around your coursework, and we pay well. If you would like to join the Lab Team, ask any Technologist for the application form.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Your licence comes through a form. Ask the Lab Team for the link at the introduction.

References

• Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (1967), The Medium is the Massage
• Marshall McLuhan (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
• Bernard Tschumi (1981), The Manhattan Transcripts
• Bernard Tschumi (1990), Spaces and Events
• Bernard Tschumi (1995), Space, Event, Movement