SCENARIO
EditorialFrancisco Moura Veiga and Léo Ornstein
“An architecture student, and architect, and an editor enter a bar.
All order beer.”
Francisco Moura Veiga
This is a scenario. It sets the spatial and cultural context for action. It gives a theme (joke, good time out, bad time out), a set (typological definition of a bar large enough for, at least, 4 people and a beer dispenser), a thematic set of possibilities (interaction between the 4 explicit actors; student, architect, editor, and beer, and the implicit actor; bartender). It limits the scope of action. Or does it?
Léo Ornstein
This magazine stands between Architecture and Game Design. Before we go into how a scenario relates what happens on it, I would like to expand on how it might relate to the specifics of these two disciplines.
As I see it, the scenario is undoubtedly the quintessential narrative tool, whether in architectural practice or gaming, be it physical or digital. In my view, the scenario is defined by its ability to belong simultaneously to both fiction and reality. It unfolds as a path where each intersection presents a node of possibilities, leading to another and so forth, thus opening up a spectrum of potential outcomes. This essence allows scenarios to serve as a guide for reflection or even to achieve a tangible objective. In architecture as in gaming, the scenario helps structure the experience for both users and developers by offering a series of plausible events that enrich their engagement and deepen their understanding of their context and space.
FMV
I am not so sure about it being “quintessential” but I could go as far as saying it is unknowingly inescapable. From your definition, one could gather that any and every creative act is imbedded in an implicit scenario: any person engaging in a design is set both against an own context (scenario) and, simultaneously, evolving the design through the setting of a new, derivative scenario. As a designer, you are either aware of this condition you are in, or you are not aware. But you are always in it.
Now, the question I want to ask you is: how defining is the scenario really? Adverts are basically setting up a scenario for prompting a desire: something as trivial as beer becomes enveloped in luxury and prestige by being associated with beauty, high-design, fame, or exclusivity. Though potentially complementary, all four scenarios are different. Still, they all “do” the same.
LO
In my view, a scenario is only truly significant when it resonates with, or is directly or indirectly connected to, the actor’s reality. For instance, given that we are currently enjoying a beer in this bar, it stands to reason that we would be more influenced by the values and message of a beer advertisement than someone who dislikes or abstains from beer. What I mean by this is that, of course, various scenarios can be employed to achieve the same end, but this depends on the actor, their values, their choices, and numerous other factors that a scenario cannot fully control. These factors can evolve the scenario into an alternative that surpasses its initial function. Do you think a scenario necessarily needs to integrate into an existing reality like a layer superimposed on a context? Perhaps advertising is so effective because it employs deeply rooted societal codes to compel us to consume, thereby exploiting our reality within a consumerist logic. But what becomes of the scenario if it is not connected to any reality of the actor?
FMV
I think this is a great question! Specially nowadays. Can anything “be” without a context? But maybe we keep it narrower, closer to the topic at hand and to the precision of your question: the relation between context and scenario. To be clear, I am understanding context as, as you said, the “reality of the actor”, or, the reality the actor is inserted in. From this stance, I thing both concepts can be interchangeable: a scenario defines a dynamic reality, so does a context. And maybe this is what makes the concept of scenario so appealing for spatial and playful design. In a wink to both Deleuze and Virilio, it creates a reality that is limited by its definition and, simultaneously, sets the possibility of its own perversion/diversion:
“An architecture student, and architect,and an editor enter a bar.
All order beer.
None of them is called Arthur.”
Léo Ornstein is an architecture student. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, he moved to Zurich to complete his master’s at ETH Zurich. There, he took his first steps into the world of publishing at the VOLUPTAS chair, where he worked as a student assistant.
Francisco Moura Veiga is an architect and an editor. He is a teaching and research assistant at the VOLUPTAS Chair at the ETH Zürich, where he is conducting his Doctoral Research Project on learning in architecture, as member of the Joint Doctoral Program of The Learning Sciences EPFL ETHZ. He is the principal of A Forschung, the founder of Publishing in Architecture and of CARTHA Magazine.