On May 9, 2003, Biswanath Halder strode into Case Western University’s Weatherhead School of Management his alma mater armed with two handguns and began shooting. Fortunately for him, the home of the School of Management was the new Peter B. Lewis Building, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry. Police officials claim the “distinctive design of the five-story building, which has no right angles and hallways that dip and swerve, complicated the job for police.” (Check out this QTVR of one of the atrium spaces)

“As the SWAT team entered the building, they were constantly under fire,” Lohn said. “They couldn’t return fire because of the design of the building. They didn’t have a clear shot.” [emphasis added]

Lohn said a SWAT team engaged in firefights with Halder throughout the building before finally cornering him in a room.

According to the University’s website, the building’s offices, meeting areas, and classrooms are “distributed on every floor to encourage informal interaction and complement the Weatherhead School’s learner-centered curriculi.” Evidentially, the major informal interaction being encouraged is between bullets and flesh. Yuck.

One blogger points out, “since when is ‘designed to give a clear shot’ a desirable design feature?” and I am struck: what if buildings were designed to give a clear shot? Or how can we test a building’s performance in a shoot-out, short of getting locked and loaded? The powerful effect of the “first person shooter” format* has already been acknowledged by the US Army. Its propaganda tool-cum-computer game “America’s Army,” in which the player assumes the role of a US Army solider who undergoes basic weapons training before being deployed on a variety of missions abroad, has been incredibly popular since it was released for the first time on July 4, 2002. This game is only one among many, the most popular of which include Counter-Strike, upon which the gameplay action of the Army game is based.

Anti-gaming crusaders have targeted first person shooter games virulently, appalled by the intuitive connection between the personal immersion in the act of play by the gamer and the way in which the game attempts to eliminate psychological intermediaries found in other genres (a distant camera or cartoon-style violence, for example). The experience of immersion within a simulation is being used by the military in both as a training device, and as a safe way for soldiers suffering from PTSD to confront their condition. The first person shooter has the potential as a front-end and back-end killer app.

In a way, the software architects and engineers to aid in evaluating, generating, and designing a structure’s seismic performance, energy efficiency, etc. are simulations like the immersive environment of the first person shooter. They seek to recreate all the conditional environmental factors that affect that which is under study. Why not engage the first person shooter game as just another analysis tools in the design development phase? Counter-Strike was good enough practice for Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people on April 26, 2007 at Virginia Tech, why not Frank Gehry? Forget CATIA, here comes Halo!

It is important to point out that most contemporary first person shooters are inherently social games: rather than populating levels with AI bad guys to fight, game designers enable players choose sides, connect their X-Boxes to the internet, and battle against each other. 3-d digital models of buildings could be imported into first person shooter software as levels and rigorously tested (played) by the legions of dedicated, mouse-wielding soldiers on the internet.

When the 2nd sequel to Microsoft’s Halo game was being tested, game designers made detailed maps of each level noting where players were being killed. This way, they could manipulate terrain, obstacles, whatever to increase or decrease the lethality of any given spot. Over time, a similar map could be developed for these hypothetical Starchitecture levels, and the spatial parameters of the architectural environment could be adjusted so even-out the lethality of the space. The game would be a kind of Ecotect of Assault.

What levels would be the most popular? Surely Koolhaas’s Educatorium would be tons of fun, as would the Casa Da Musica. Who wouldn’t want to lay down suppressing fire in an Eisenman Case Study House? How effective are flash grenades in Libeskind’s Royal Ontario Museum? Would the ramps of the Carpenter Center become a killing field? Is there anywhere to hide in SANAA’s glass pavilion in Toledeo? And so on.

*the name is very descriptive. The game’s camera is locked at eye level, so the screen is literally what the player would be seeing if the situation were real, complete with the player’s own gun carrying arms out front.