Empathic Imagination: Nurturing Architectural Creativity in Video Games and Virtual Reality Simulations

Empathic imagination, namely the ability to internalize and project potential emotions, actions, and experiences anticipated in designed spaces, is an essential creative expertise architects should nurture to better perceive, understand, and shape the built environment. This essay analyzes two digital techniques helpful for studying the imaginative empathy driving designers: video games and virtual reality simulations. Both interfaces provide opportunities for free movement, first-person perspective, autonomous decision-making, sensory immersion, and emotional engagement, thus fostering architects’ imaginative problem-solving skills by situating, embedding, and extending their resonating bodies. Two examples support this theoretical framework: 1) the popular life-simulation game The Sims clarifies our building instinct and need for direct control, a sense of agency, and affective affinities during the design process, and 2) outcomes from a workshop crafting virtual atmospheric sceneries discuss how drawing, simulation, and experience affect architectural creativity among students.