Forms in Light Finding Lost Santos By Justin Reeve • September 14th, 2023 Carrying out a detailed comparison of GTA5’s Los Santos and Los Angeles through the lens of Michel Foucault sheds light on the intricate interplay between space, place, social order and power.
Forms in Light Hidden Assumptions By Justin Reeve • August 15th, 2023 Cities: Skylines and Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic provide unique experiences in urban planning and resource management while representing completely different political economies.
Forms in Light Influence and Persuasion By Justin Reeve • July 14th, 2023 In much the same way as architecture, power is reflected in the control exerted by level designers over the movement of players in videogames.
Forms in Light Fantastic Follies By Justin Reeve • June 14th, 2023 These wildly impractical structures were made for purely aesthetic purposes, perfectly complementing their pastoral surroundings.
Forms in Light After Us By Justin Reeve • May 11th, 2023 There’s a remarkably prevalent misconception that if people suddenly disappeared from the planet, the environment would eventually return to how it was before we started transforming the landscape.
Forms in Light A New Era By Justin Reeve • April 12th, 2023 Fires are frequently a source of positive change in the real world, at least from an historical perspective.
Forms in Light Best Games Architecture of 2022 By Justin Reeve • March 14th, 2023 The fourth annual roundup of the best architecture in games.
Forms in Light Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire By Justin Reeve • February 10th, 2023 Dishonored is a game which harkens back to a time when protection for working people was practically nonexistent, ruthless exploitation being the rule.
Forms in Light Gremlins on Board By Justin Reeve • January 11th, 2023 Before there was the movie, there was the real thing. I’m of course talking about the little monsters that tear apart airplanes whenever pilots aren’t looking.
Forms in Light Anatomy of an Airplane By Justin Reeve • December 19th, 2022 This might be the moment to take an architectural approach to the best warbird of them all, the P51 Mustang.
Forms in Light Monstrous Architecture By Justin Reeve • November 11th, 2022 Neoclassicism never actually had any positive connotations and became increasingly sinister over time, going from somewhat dodgy to entirely despicable.
Forms in Light How to Build a Racetrack By Justin Reeve • October 13th, 2022 Adopting a broader view as to what constitutes architecture can be a worthwhile endeavor.
Forms in Light Wheeling and Dealing By Justin Reeve • September 14th, 2022 Archaeology as a field isn’t just about what’s in the ground. Sometimes you have to look down from on high to really get a handle on how much of an impact a given activity is having.
Forms in Light Hell on Earth By Justin Reeve • August 9th, 2022 The levels in DOOM Eternal provide a reminder that despite being the predominant forms of architecture for the better part of a century, internationalism and modernism are not without their problems.
Forms in Light Body and Mind By Justin Reeve • July 6th, 2022 Similar to colleges around the world today, gymnasiums in ancient Greece were public institutions where young adults were offered various forms of training.
Forms in Light Fair and Square By Justin Reeve • June 9th, 2022 Plenty of games have been set in Egypt, Iraq and even China, but few have taken place in India. Why has the Indus Valley Civilization been so badly ignored?
Boston is Burning! By Justin Reeve • May 5th, 2022 Many of the structures were too tall to reach by fire ladder and there wasn’t enough water pressure in the fire hoses to put out the flames on some of the rooftops.
Forms in Light The Power of Print By Justin Reeve • April 7th, 2022 For people in the past, writing represented a method of interacting with the world around them as opposed to a means of conveying information.
Forms in Light Lost Cities By Justin Reeve • March 10th, 2022 Shadow of the Tomb Raider gets a lot wrong about archaeology, but the game at least pokes a hole in the myth of the lost city.
Forms in Light Sekiro’s Floating World By Justin Reeve • February 10th, 2022 Sekiro’s cloud motif likely refers to the “floating world” of the Edo period, which offered many services geared toward samurai and the rising merchant class.
Forms in Light Ashes to Ashes By Justin Reeve • January 12th, 2022 Take some time to poke around the rooms of House of Ashes when you aren’t being chased by vampires and you’ll be richly rewarded.
Best of 2021 The Best Architecture in Games of 2021 By Justin Reeve • December 30th, 2021 Justin gathers the year’s best examples of architecture in videogames.
Forms in Light Parisian Purification By Justin Reeve • December 9th, 2021 Paris was the city of muck and mud long before it became the city of lights, and it really isn’t pretty in Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Forms in Light The Best of Worlds By Justin Reeve • November 11th, 2021 Megacorporations can’t be trusted to pursue any sort of progressive politics.
Forms in Light When Cities Die By Justin Reeve • October 4th, 2021 Walking around Washington, D.C. in The Division 2 provides a reminder that nothing lasts forever.
Forms in Light Hostile Architecture By Justin Reeve • August 27th, 2021 The developer behind Umurangi Generation tries to imagine what the future would look like if hostile architecture were the norm instead of the increasingly common exception.
Forms in Light Glitz and Glamor By Justin Reeve • August 13th, 2021 What lurks below the surface of Yakuza 6’s dual settings?
Forms in Light Architecture and Authority By Justin Reeve • May 31st, 2021 Somewhere, someone is still really mad it’s called the “Racoon Police Department.”
Forms in Light Members By Justin Reeve • May 11th, 2021 The bodily architecture of Xenoblade Chronicles.
Forms in Light Parasites By Justin Reeve • March 30th, 2021 The real parasites are always the capitalists.
Forms in Light Wealth and Poverty By Justin Reeve • March 5th, 2021 A tale of haves and have nots on the frontier.
Forms in Light Marble Madness By Justin Reeve • February 1st, 2021 Marble, marble, everywhere. Why is it all white and shiny?
Forms in Light Bizarre Banality By Justin Reeve • January 12th, 2021 The house in Gone Home is WEIRD.
Best of 2020 The Best Architecture in Games in 2020 By Justin Reeve • December 30th, 2020 Justin gathers the best examples of architecture in videogames.
Forms in Light Formal and Vernacular Architecture By Justin Reeve • December 14th, 2020 The game world in Breath of the Wild is filled with interesting architecture
Forms in Light Some Things Last Some of the Time By Justin Reeve • November 3rd, 2020 Why are some buildings taken apart and recycled while others are simply renovated?
Forms in Light Architectural Improvisation By Justin Reeve • October 7th, 2020 A look at the repurposed architecture of Metro: Exodus.
Forms in Light Billboard Architecture By Justin Reeve • August 13th, 2020 What Sega has to say about kanbankenchiku, literally translated as “billboard architecture,” in Yakuza 0 is that all of the bright lights and flashy colors might be more meaningful than first meets the eye.
Forms in Light Pyramid Schemes By Justin Reeve • July 14th, 2020 A 101 on the ancient structures players marveled over in Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
