Gamifying Place-Making in Architectural Design Studio: A Workshop Model Based on Place, Territoriality and Appropriation

This study presents a gamified architectural design workshop intended to help students translate the theoretical concepts of place, territoriality, and appropriation into concrete design decisions. Its central proposition is that a process-oriented, mission-based structure, built from sequential, time-limited, and progressively disclosed tasks, can operationalize place-making theory within the architectural design studio. The model deliberately avoids conventional reward mechanics such as points or badges, relying instead on the structure of the process itself to drive engagement.

The workshop was conducted with fourteen fourth-year students in a single course. Students first constructed imaginary users, then designed individual 25 square-metre spaces tailored to those users, and finally combined these spaces into four collective compositions. Qualitative analysis of the outputs found that user profiles functioned as generators of spatial programmes, incorporating sensory, emotional, and symbolic considerations. At the collective stage, groups achieved spatial coherence through several strategies, including adjacency, gradual transitions, narrative sequencing, and shared circulation.

The authors position the model as a transferable but exploratory framework. Its evidence rests on design outputs drawn from regular course activities rather than on measured engagement or learning gains, and the small sample within a single course limits claims about measurable performance. The work's substantive contribution is therefore conceptual and pedagogical: it frames place as an active, relational, and experiential dimension of design. Anonymized student work was used without collection of sensitive personal data, and no formal ethical clearance was required.