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Forms in Light

Forms in Light
A late evening city skyline from Grand Theft Auto 5 with lit-up office buildings silhouetted against a dusky sky.

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
A top-down view of a busy city with streets filled with tiny cars and grids of miniature buildings.

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
A black and white photo of panopticon, with a central guard tower in the middle of a ring of prison cells.

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
A prime example of Capriccio, the painting depicts an idyllic countryside with several structures displaying different architectural styles.

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
An overgrown, post-apocalyptic city environment from The Last of Us. A rusted city bus covered in vines and greenery features prominently.

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 screenshot from Pharaoh: A New Era showing several citizens' homes from a bird's-eye view.

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
A screenshot from Dying Light 2: Stay Human shows player character Aiden hanging perilously from a stone rainspout on an old church.

Best Games Architecture of 2022

By Justin Reeve • March 14th, 2023

The fourth annual roundup of the best architecture in games.

Forms in Light
A screenshot from the videogame Dishonored shows a cobblestoned street winding its way through city buildings lit by dusky sun filtered through a smog-filled sky.

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
An artist's interpretation of several small gremlins tinkering with the wings and body of a WWII bomber plane.

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
A black and white illustration of an American P51 Mustang airplane.

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
A photograph taken inside the courtyard of a Neoclassical building. The red and white color scheme and angle of the photo give the viewer a feeling akin to being inside of a monster's locked jaw, peering out through its teeth.

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
A satellite image of desert ruins with several hollow ways (roads) leading to and away from them.

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
A hellish landscape populated with flowing rivers of lava and harsh towers and bridges constructed with bone-like materials.

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
A black and white photograph of a man standing in the center of sunlit Grecian ruins.

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
The ruins of Harappa in the Indus Valley Civilization on a clear, sunny day.

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?

An etching of Boston harbor during the Great Boston Fire of 1872.

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
A screenshot from Okami showing its distinctive brushwork art style. In it a large red and whit fox sits under a sakura tree in bloom.

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
A view of a large Japanese temple as seen from below. Stone walls tower above the viewer. A flock of birds streaks across the cloudy sky.

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
Ad adventurer wearing a leather backpack holds a torch aloft in a subterranean cave, illuminating an eerie winged statue with the body of a human and the head of a large predator cat.

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
A large glass lobby with an art deco fountain in the center of a marble floor. Small palm trees grow inside.

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
A dingy, dilapidated street in 18th-century Paris.

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
A bird's-eye view of rows and rows of tenement houses.

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
Late afternoon light on a side street in a post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C.

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
A videogame screenshot of a bird's-eye view of a city lot and outdoor swimming pool surround by graffiti-tagged buildings. The shapes making up the scenery are harsh, sharp polygons.

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
The entrance gate to Kamurocho illuminated at night.

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
A scene of the world of Xenoblade Chronicles

Members

By Justin Reeve • May 11th, 2021

The bodily architecture of Xenoblade Chronicles.

Forms in Light
A man being carried through the streets on a litter.

Parasites

By Justin Reeve • March 30th, 2021

The real parasites are always the capitalists.

Forms in Light
An outpost in Red Dead Redemption 2

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

Nothing Lasts Forever

By Justin Reeve • September 14th, 2020

Everything falls apart.

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.

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