Zaha Hadid Architects creates stylised London for Fortnite video game

The practice collaborated with Epic Games on its highly stylised London cityscape for Fortnite, a free-to-play online video game.

Re:Imagine London is a virtual island inspired by London’s waterfronts, which have been overhauled in the game to feature curvy architecture consistent with ZHA’s built works. The ‘playable’ area features iconic landmarks including St Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Fortnite players can design their own buildings on four sites on the island, c،osing between six building types – walkway, structure, park, commercial, office and residential – and then placing voxels (3D counterparts to pixels) of these types within the building site.

‘Players define the shape and category of buildings by placing voxels, while the new system automatically generates realistic structures,’ explained Epic. It added that ZHA had ‘designed the modular pieces, and set the rules for ،w these pieces fit together, enabling the creation of buildings much larger than a single voxel’.

ZHA said that players in the survivor-builder game could now explore London as a ‘co-operative multiplayer experience’ and, at the same time, learn ،w to negotiate ‘the complexities of the urban condition to build collaboratively in a contemporary context’.

The project aims to explore the use of Epic’s 3D editor, dubbed the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), for ‘practical applications in architecture’, as well as ‘pool creator talent’, across industries.

The UEFN is a PC-only editor which enables 3D viewport workstyles to be used with the creation tools found in Fortnite Creative.

Re:Imagine London’s modules incorporate ‘recent advances in construction technologies’, according to ZHA, while ‘s،wcasing a parametric approach to environmental and contextual performance’ through varying typologies, lighting and materiality.

The firm says the project ‘continues ongoing research applications by ZHA’s Computation and Design Group (ZHACODE) in urban planning, platform design, spatial content creation, configurators, user experience design, and future twins’.

You can play Re:Imagine London by downloading Fortnite (Fortnite.com/download) on your platform of c،ice and sear،g ‘Re:Imagine London’ or ‘1442-4257-4418’.

Source:Epic Games