This virtual environment is presented as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026 and was produced through the RMIT Master of Architecture Design Studio Continuums Data Being 2: RMIT City North in Semester 2, 2025.

The studio was led by RMIT Architecture industry staff member Vei Tan and RMIT Architecture Lecturer Dr Patrick Macasaet, with Cienan Muir of Indiginerd. It was developed with RMIT Master of Architecture students: Hussain Asghar, Vanessa Batras, Callan Beaton, Ashlin Cam, Patrick Downs, Ruoxuan Jiang, Whitney Lay, Wen Kang Evan Leow, On Tung Leung, Andy Luu, Tevin McSweeney, Mandisa Sarker, Natthanan Surachartkumthornkul, Ryan Tan, and Leonardo Teller.

The project was produced in partnership with, received funding and supported by RMIT’s city north activation challenge 2025, rmit school of architecture & urban design immersive futures lab and RMIT ARCHITECTURE.

the elective was led by tan and macasaet with rmit master of architecture students - research assistants: Ishika Thakur, Dan Jerinel Bay, Kaitlyn Matthews, and Ashlin Cam.

Further refinement of the downloadable virtual environment was led by Vei Tan, Dr Patrick Macasaet, and lead worldbuilder Ashlin Cam.

Continuums Data Being 2: RMIT City North was a Master of Architecture design studio exploring how gaming technologies, Indigenous knowledge, popular culture and architectural worldmaking can shape new civic imaginaries for RMIT’s City North precinct.

The studio was structured around the conceptual framework of Continuums, Data, Being. Continuums referred to the speculative narratives, polemics and trajectories that generate architectural ideas. Data grounded these ideas through site conditions, environmental systems, histories, cultural contexts and observed realities. Being translated these ideas into architectural propositions that could be entered, experienced and tested through design.

Rather than treating architecture as a fixed object or final image, the studio approached architecture as a living world: something formed through stories, atmospheres, infrastructures, ecologies and interactions. Students developed speculative civic propositions that explored care, regeneration, climate resilience, cultural memory, future learning environments and productive infrastructures within the City North precinct.

Gaming and real-time gaming environments were central to the studio’s method. Game engines were used not simply as visualisation tools, but as experimental design environments where architectural ideas could be modelled, inhabited, navigated and transformed in real time. Through worldmaking, narrative-building, forming environments and constructing ecologies, students produced architectural worlds that ask how civic futures might be imagined differently when they are not only drawn, but played.

The resulting downloadable environment brings together these student propositions into an explorable real-time world, inviting audiences to encounter architecture as a speculative, immersive and public form of civic imagination.

Alongside the design studio, the RMIT Architecture & Urban Design Immersive Futures Lab led CivicImmersive, an Elective Based Research Assistance project that explored how gaming technologies, immersive environments and public programming could open new modes of civic engagement.

Working in parallel with the RMIT Master of Architecture Design Studio Continuums Data Being 2: RMIT City North, the elective brought together student researchers to assist in the design, coordination and delivery of public-facing civic-immersive events across the City North precinct. These activations extended the design studio beyond the classroom and into public space, creating opportunities for students, collaborators, industry partners and broader audiences to engage with speculative architectural propositions through gameplay, projection, conversation and immersive media.

The elective investigated how architectural ideas could be translated into interactive digital forms, using real-time gaming environments not only as design tools, but as platforms for public dialogue. Through this process, students developed skills in immersive event design, civic engagement, spatial storytelling, public programming and the use of Unreal Engine as a medium for architectural communication.

CivicImmersive formed an important bridge between the studio, the downloadable game world and the public events that shaped the project. It supported a broader studio-to-street model, where architecture became something to be tested, shared and experienced through collective forms of play, projection and civic imagination.