House Block was designed and built using AUAR’s discrete housing system consisting of a kit of parts, known as Block Type A. Each block was CNC milled from a single sheet of plywood, assembled by hand, and then post-tensioned on site. Constructed from 270 identical blocks, there are no predefined geometric types or hierarchy between parts. The discrete enables an open-ended, adaptive system where each block can be used as a column, floor slab, wall, or stair—allowing for disconnection, reconfiguration, and reassembly (Retsin 2019). The democratisation of design and production that defines the discrete creates points for alternative value systems to enter, for critical realignments in architectural production.

By allowing for learning through playing, ARchitect provides alternative ways of gaining knowledge about design and architecture and empowers non-experts to take active and informed positions in shaping their future urban environments on a micro-scale, rethinking conventional market relations and exploring emerging personal and public values. The ARchitect game challenges conventional participatory design where an architect plays an essential role in facilitation of the design process and translation of end users’ design proposals. In contrast, the proposed game system allows non-architect players to autonomously produce and access design solutions through embedded computational simulation by an AR application, thus giving an equal chance to non-professionals to express their design visions and become aware of potential implications of their ideas. By providing free access to the game contents through the ARchitect platform and a playful user experience by which design principles can be learned, this game will inspire the general public to engage in conversation about home design, eventually spreading architectural literacy to less-privileged communities.