London Developers Toolkit — Alephograph: Architecture, drawing and video games.
A 'satirical app' / renegade startup platform investigating the burgeoning skyline of phallic residential developments across London - targeted at the unfeasibly wealthy. The app asks users to produce 'napkin sketches' and parametricize their architecture, allowing someone of limited formal training to produce their own totemic structure. The Toolkit also provides a facility for the production of rich and visually evocative promotional material to capture the hearts and minds of potential investors. Built on Unity. Soundtrack: In Too Deep (MIDI Version) by Phil Collins.
Partially inspired by the site Development Aesthetics as well as the infamous Redrow 'American Psycho' advert.
Seen together, a set of possible structures composed of the in-game components cluster together, like the totems rising at various points on London's skyline.
Structures being assembled as the player goes through the motions of producing an 'inspirational' napkin sketch (off screen).
Components for the totemic/phallic structure are sourced from fact, fiction and fact that is stranger than fiction. The world of the super rich is seen through voxel-based models, their cartoonish forms mixing with the serious issues at play.
The game interface in use as an intrepid 'designer' attempts to trace a particularly inspirational napkin sketch into the system. Which London building might this be?
'Glossey Renderings' produced by the London Developers Toolkit, to be printed, cut out and distributed around the city to demonstrate the exciting future of London's skyline!