AdviceToolbox
30 / wfmag.ccThere’s a good reason why King Kong
only ever climbed iconic buildingsLandmarks
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Natural
Landmarks
Dramatic topographic features,
vast ancient forests, and
so-called natural monuments
such as Mount Fuji, the hills of
Rio de Janeiro, Lake Geneva,
or the L-shape of the Thames
as it crosses central London
can function as perfectly
memorable landmarks.
Adding natural elements like
these to an imaginary city will
give it another layer of richness
and character, as well as more
points to navigate by.of the city and everyday experience. They’re
handy for navigation, and are often used to
provide directions (“The pub’s on the left,
next to the great tower”) or serve as common
meeting points. Landmarks can vary greatly in
function, shape, size, and even visibility, as their
perception is up to a point always subjective- there is, after all, such a thing as a personal
landmark. That colourful shop we pass on
our daily walk to the oɝce? That’s a personal
landmark, just like the brightly painted home of
an oft-visited friend.
SIGNATURE BUILDINGS
In video games, level design should give players
the chance to make personal landmarks, and
should also provide recognisable buildings that
will serve as the focus for their setting. The latter
are the objective landmarks, if you will: the
waypoints players can mentally note and use as
reference points for other important locations,
just as you might remember where a jazz club
is in relation to the Empire State Building in
real-world Manhattan. These grand landmarks
should be important and imposing enough to
define an area, or even a whole metropolis.
A landmark gives us a simple way of
describing a city. As in real life, they should be
recognisable, sport a distinct architectural style,
carry some sort of historical significance, and be
ideologically important to the city. /ike the (iffel
Tower and the Sydney Opera House, and like
Perdido Street Station in China Miéville’s novel
of the same name, such buildings are shorthand
for the city itself. See the Space Needle, and you
instantly think of Seattle.AUTHOR
KONSTANTINOS DIMOPOULOS
Konstantinos Dimopoulos is a game urbanist and designer, combining a PhD
in urban planning with video games. He is the author of the forthcoming Virtual
Cities atlas, designs game cities, and consults on their creation. game-cities.comC
30 / wfmag.cc The Citadel in Half-
Life 2’s City 17 not only
establishes who rules
the place, but also acts
as a clear gameplay goal.
ities are about the life and
societies they contain, but they can
sometimes be summed up by their
most famous buildings: landmarks
that encapsulate local daily life,
societal aspirations, historic achievements,
and dominant ideologies. These edifices can
become iconic, and define a city’s character
they’re often considered recognisable enough
to act as a logo or trademark as a summary of
a city’s identity.
The Parthenon and the Athenian Acropolis
around it, the Colosseum in Rome, London’s Big
Ben, New York’s Empire State Building, Christ the
Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro, and the Forbidden
City in Beijing are all synonymous with the cities
in which they were built.
Besides being recognisable, landmarks also
tend to function as spatial points of reference.
They instantly draw the gaze, and thus become
part of the citizens’ (or visitors’) mental map