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Fulfilment City deploys the unique logics of an Amazon fulfilment centre at the scale of a city. The project questions what the impact would be in taking the organisational systems of ‘non-human’ architecture and using them to generate an urban form. The game takes place in a giant warehouse, where an array of urban elements are organised on towering shelves as items to be picked and utilised. Players take on the role of both humans and robots to fulfil randomly generated orders and construct a city. Different player types hold different capabilities, with some robots moving faster than others, others having greater loading capacities or superior visual interfaces to find components. As players struggle to keep up with the pace of contemporary logistics, they create a towering city above the warehouse composed of all their deliveries, successful or otherwise. Fulfilment City ultimately explores how stretching the design logics of the 'non-human' architecture that underpin our contemporary life out to the design of urban space can generate productive tensions and provide a spatial embodiment of the logistic networks that structure our contemporary life.
Seen in context, the non-human logics of the fulfilment centre as an urban form are read in contrast to the surrounding city.
Like an Amazon warehouse, the game world uses a series of shelves on which urban components are stored and collected by various human and robotic pickers.
Players can control various different types of robot to collect and deliver urban components as orders arrive. Each robot has different performance properties requiring different strategies.
Inspired by James Wines’ Highrise of Homes, orders in Fulfilment City are comprised of various urban elements picked from warehouse shelves.
Shelving units form the core structure of Fulfilment City, with the various different picking robots moving around them fulfilling orders.
As players move through the game delivering components, they are tracked, allowing for the analysis and development of more efficient delivery strategies.
After an order is complete, it will be assessed by the game’s systems, given a score and then packed and delivered to the residential tower racks at the top of Fulfilment City.
The logic of shelving and picked components creates a new urban form that demonstrates the logic of the fulfilment centre in action.
Players can deliver orders for urban space to the city in many different ways, but traces of the logic of the fulfilment centre always remain.