The virtual and the real are colliding in a unique partnership that launched this month. Zaha Hadid Architects and Epic Games have created a new in-game experience for the popular Fortnite video game. 

Virtual Worlds: The collaboration, titled ‘Re:Imagine London’, is a video game experience within the game where players can explore and build within a virtual London. The partnership’s goal was to encourage players to start exploring urban development and engagement by gamifying a sandbox development. 

According to Zaha Hadid Architects, players will be invited to create buildings and walkable areas within a sustainable and mixed-used planning environment. 

“The experience facilitates rapid optioneering through an engaging and exploratory approach to negotiating the complexities of the urban condition to build collaboratively in a contemporary context,” said Zaha Hadid Architects.

Virtual City Modeling & Real World Development Participation  

Zaha Hadid Architects used Epic Games’ Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) to create Re:Imagine London. The company wants to gain insight into how the UEFN software could be used for practical architectural design projects.

Fortnite developers hope to “inspire players to envision how future cities could be more walkable, vibrant, green, and sustainable.” 

• Players place blocks or voxels on designated sites within central London, each with height restrictions and unique features modeled after their real-world counterparts.
• Players choose between six different types of building (Walkway, Structure, Park, Commercial, Office, and Residential), and design it by placing voxels of those types within the build site.

Players can save buildings and interact with pedestrians that are spawned within build sites, which then navigate around park and walkway areas and continue to spawn as the site develops.

This project continues the studio’s research into digital applications into urban planning, spatial content creation and user experience, carried out by its Computation and Design research group, ZHA Code.