o2: u e | unexpected encounters
Bihter Almaç
The Barlett School of Architecture UCL, London, United Kingdom
bihteralmac@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
o2: UE | Unexpected Encounters is an architectural board game
for two players, in which these players create diagrammatic mod-
els of ‘the home’ they imagine against and with each other, and
in which this act of play creates a spatial language that results in
unexpected narratives of the notion of domesticity. The research
element of the game focuses on how ‘place’ and ‘placelessness’
are constructed and interpreted through our innate creativity by
manipulating the intricate operations of initial design decisions.
This exhibition is a performance of o2: U E, where designers meet
with others through their imaginations.
The aim of the game, ‘build the home you imagine,’ tends to be a
spatial reflection of an aggregate of joyous moments. Meanwhile,
domestic life inevitably bears the very extremes of unbounded
happiness and inexhaustible trauma. In o2: U E, these extremities
are played with diverse pleasure and dismay.
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The game compels two players to meet in a fragile state where
their imaginations are recent and slightly formed. This is a phase
where an encounter with others is unexpected. Therefore, the
game is an unconscious negotiation play. Throughout the game,
the uneasiness of the encounter is transformed into an open-end-
ed, imaginary communication. o2: U E does not end with a
winner; it is about the uncanny experience of the unexpected and
the negotiation it causes with the other.
CUMULUS HONG KONG 2016
Keywords
architectural game, imaginary, conversation
Playing is not related to our habitual and ordinary life, rather a
fugitive threshold. I find this threshold as a delicate potential to
research on our imagination and thus design thinking. Playing is a
fleeting bundle of acts with precise rituals (Huizinga, 1971). When
a game starts, the reality changes; players and spectators enter
into another dimension (Sicart, 2014). Playing tends to create
unexpected relations, which force us to meet our imagination at
an unknown level. I think the ritual of the game resembles meeting
with others; observation, conversation, negotiation are constantly
at play.
o2: U E is an architectural board game for two players, in which
these players create diagrammatic models of ‘the home’ they
imagine against and with each other, and in which this act of play
creates a spatial language that results in unexpected narratives
of the notion of domesticity. This paper tends to explain the
theoretical framework of the game, by briefly explaining how the
conversation between the players constructs the imaginary home
and tends to create a spatial language.
Meeting the Unexpected
Meeting others is a major data gathering sociality that people
are keen on (Goffman, 1990); however, the whole event is mostly
dubious. We deliberately or instinctively act to impress when
meeting, Gofmann defines this as self-control to manoeuvre in
the subtly ongoing intelligence game between us (1990). Meeting
someone by playing is utterly unexpected; when playing, you
abandon your habitual self-controlling acts.
One of the precedents of o2: U E is ‘Play It By Trust’ (Ono, 1966).
This is an all-white checkered chessboard with all-white pieces.
The initial position of the game is the same with conventional
chess. The two sides blend in with each move. By playing with
trust, you begin to negotiate your position and your pieces with
the other. The planned manoeuvres become indistinct and your
claim of ownership is blurred. This is an unexpected encounter
where your differences do not individualise you but create a vi-
brant embodiment of you and the other. It is an attempt of uniting
two minds into one to the point where no one is indistinguishable
from other.
The other precedent is Zweig’s ‘Chess Story.’ It is about a captive,
Dr B. who plays chess against himself in his mind (2011). This is a
game where your opponent can wander in your mind and catch
your initial manoeuvres. There are no gesture mechanisms to hide
your acts. These unexpected encounters split the mind and create
different identities that are in constant negotiation. This is a rather
schizophrenic act that forcefully creates the other from oneself.
Surprisingly, meeting the unexpected is an intimate act. What
Kristeva defines as ‘the uncanny strangeness’ is usually misinter-
preted as foreign; controversially, it lies in our neglected famili-
arities (1994). Moreover, understanding this intimacy, the feeble
boundary between me and the other, is so stupefying that it leads
to mystify our identities (Kristeva, 1994). Although the other is seen
as a trespasser, they are the key to the communication with our
desires (Fink, 1997).
Briefly, the aim of o2: U E is to compel designers to meet in a
fragile state where they negotiate their innate imaginations with an
open-ended imaginary communication. This act leads to question
how ‘place,’ ‘placelessness’ are constructed and interpreted
through our innate creativity. The game does not end with a win-
ner; it is about the uncanny experience of the unexpected and the
negotiation it causes with the other.
The Home Narratives
Home nurtures refuge; it is a cosy place where we willingly expose
our fragility and corporal desires (Tuan, 1975). It is an accumu-
lation of ‘private and collective memories’ (Wilson, 1992). The
feeling of home comes from tacit perceptions. Furthermore, this
derivative relation is quite intricate; what we feel can never be
explicit (Tuan, 1975).
Meanwhile, the domestic life inevitably bears the very extremes of
unbounded happiness and inexhaustible trauma. This dichotomy
lies in the nature of the home. For Vidler, this uncanny emerges
with the transformation of familiar to foreign and corresponds to
‘modern nostalgia’ and ‘homelessness nomadism’ (1994). In the
game, this dichotomy is at an intrinsic level, similar to Kafka’s story
‘The Burrow.’ In the story, ‘the creature’ logically builds its burrow
to expel its fears of the unreasonable other. Then, understands
that by building the burrow, it is trapped in with its own fear (1946).
Home is a delicate place, whereas ‘the home you imagine’ is its
lurking double.
When we imagine, we use ‘irreal object’; a multiplicity of con-
nected images where the time and relations are different from
our normative perception (Sartre, 2010). The home you imagine
nestles multiple layers of memory; projections for the future; tacit
knowledge of placeness; fears that need to be expelled.
I use ‘build the home you imagine’ as the task of the game to
kindle the unexpected encounters both in mind and as places.
By focusing on ‘the imagined home’, the players negotiate and
observe each other’s intimate and utterly frail imageries.
The spatial language
Games start with the seduction of the rules, which initialises the
play and enables the game to deploy its reality (Sicart, 2014). In
o2: U E, there are 9 pieces and the game board is an incidental
grid. The pieces symbolise tactile experiences, feelings and spa-
tial identities and are; delusion; dull; expectation; layer; memory;
mass; immanent; first encounter; void. Players use the same set
and need to negotiate how to use the pieces. There are few rules
and talking is forbidden. Throughout the play, the two imaginaries
intertwine. I define this as an unconscious negotiation play. While
what you are designing is only known by you, your imaginary
home multiplies its meaning in the other’s narrative.
Language already resides at the threshold of our imagination be-
cause of the meanings it triggers (Lacan, 2006). And, a conversa-
tion is a mutual construction. It is built up as we communicate with
each other and meet in our individual ways. I choose to use these
pieces in the game to create a spatial language where it is pos-
sible to start a conversation solely rooted from our imagination.
Freud says the dream element is a horde of images that act like
a charade of equivocal words (Grosz, 2005). When playing, the
pieces of the game should be treated similarly. The conversations
of the game produce an aggregate of circumstantial images. The
further research of the game is to treat these conversations as the
diagrams of the spatial language.
Image 1. ‘Unexpected Encounters with someone I do know’, B. Almaç 2016.
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An Imaginary o2: UE
• You understand that this is a game where you need to build
the home you imagine.
• At first, you recollect your dreams and wish to build it. You
look through the pieces. There is something peculiar under
their happy, trivial appearances. The meanings are
equivocal.
• You begin to reflect on your fragile imagination of the home
you have on mind. You unravel ‘the others’ –the unwanted,
the buried– of your imaginary home. You would not want this.
• Now, you know the pieces. You begin to build the home you
imagine – or fear of. After your first move, you wait for the
other to play. Now, you understand that the other fails to
interpret what you are imagining. You want to comment on
Experiment-Artefact - products or artworks
their move, but you cannot. You are not allowed to.
• You understand that you have to negotiate for the home you
imagine. You begin to focus on your observation of the other.
• Then, the board becomes a place where you are forced to
communicate about the home you dream of.
• You try to manipulate the conversation. Now the home you
imagine becomes something other.
 Conclusion
Playing is a fugitive threshold. It tends to create unexpected rela-
tions that force us to meet our imagination at an unknown level.
Moreover, to meet someone by playing is different than a normal
meeting where we act to impress; because you play to abandon
your habitual self-controlling acts.

o2: U E roots from two distinctive approaches in chess, which are

tackling with the encounters of opponents in play. In the game,
players create diagrammatic models of ‘the home’ they imagine
against and with each other. Therefore this game compels de-
signers to negotiate their innate imaginations with an open-ended
imaginary conversation. This is aimed to question how ‘place,’
‘placelessness’ are constructed and interpreted through our
innate creativity and create a spatial language that results in the
unexpected narratives of the notion of domesticity.

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630

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CUMULUS HONG KONG 2016