Buildings, Narratives and Minnette De Silva:

There is an increasing interest in architectural education to engage the entangled, intersectional narratives surrounding the histories of buildings in ways that can permit a confrontation with problematic issues of power and perspective. What might it be like to reframe our engagement with De Silva’s practice through the tensions that arise between historicity and historiography? For example, is it possible for a lecture or an essay—both fundamental mediums for how architectural history and theory are taught—to truly make learners aware of the complex ways that the colonial and modern projects have historically interacted? If a building (or design project) is an “event” in time where many values and ultimately multiple narratives are negotiated, shouldn’t engaging the complex past of these projects enable an understanding of how these negotiations played out? How may the possibilities of other playful forms of interaction such as games, as well as digital technologies be used within this endeavour?

This main part of the experimental project is a collaboration with learners at BSc and MSc levels in Germany and collaborators from Sri Lanka to collectively engage these broader questions, by looking more closely at how they played out in Minnette De Silva’s work. We do so by collectively developing experimental, interactive games that make use of playful storytelling and conversation. By creating the heuristics for history based, interactive storytelling systems, students are immersed directly in the questions of building practice history and historiography. At one level, developing the prototype as a learning exercise enabled students to critically engage these broader questions by developing an alternative rather than stopping at a mere critique. At another level, being publicly presented on this website means these prototypes can become a learning tool for others.
All these interactive systems can help the wider public to gain a better understanding of the relationships between the pasts of buildings, historicity, historiography, narratives and facts. Moreover, playing these games can enable the public, i.e., those with no formal training in architecture and design, to understand the complex cultural role that architecture and architectural practices play in the contemporary world. In other words, it is hoped that those of you who interact with these games—and, thereby, with Minnette De Silva’s work—will gain an appreciation of how the issues and questions raised about engaging her past extends far beyond the history of a single architect.

The website contains four games designed by students titled:
(1)Weaving the bigger picture
(2)Abondon-me-not
(3)Craftibly Minnette
(4)Unravelling narratives