Before Brick Breaker, there was Arkanoid. And before Arkanoid, there was Atari's Breakout. In all of these games, a ball ricochets around the screen, destroying bricks. Your job is simple: keep that ball bouncing upward, eliminating bricks.
Architectural prodigy Bjarke Ingels' firm, BIG, just turned its website into a BIG-branded version of Arkanoid. The makeover wasn’t all that drastic; the firm's home page design already featured an array of neon-hued icons, each linked to a project. Now, rather than a chronological arrangement, the icons cluster by color. A mouse-controlled “paddle” at the bottom bats the ball around.
Why the gimmick? Unclear. You can't navigate the page if you aren't busting bricks, and there's no obvious incentive to play beyond nostalgia or beating your high score. The Konami Code also does nothing. That said, Ingels is a fan of virtual worlds, including Minecraft and its analog predecessor, Lego. (Both appear to have influenced his design of London's latest Serpentine Pavilion.) "These fictional worlds empower people with the tools to transform their own environments," Ingels has said. "This is what architecture ought to be."
Perhaps that's all there is to it: diversion for diversion's sake. The Arkanoidification of BIG's website won't help you navigate the firm's roster of projects, and it probably won't inspire you the way a bucket of Lego bricks would—but Ingels, and BIG, are clearly big proponents of play.
