Jurisdiction: The Board Game
Most histories of architecture are written as if the disciplines of civil engineering, landscape architecture, and city planning simply do not exist. Within these texts, architects are portrayed as versatile heroes who not only design buildings, but also cities, infrastructures, and landscapes. Rarely is any serious attention devoted to the interactions between architects and their counterparts in allied disciplines. Recent sociological research, however, suggests that professions do not develop independently, but are instead shaped by jurisdictional conflicts with competitors. Jurisdiction: The Board Game presents a playable model of inter-professional competition. Structured around six territories (housing, towers, parks, plazas, streets, and gardens), the game requires players to adopt a profession and reconfigure its disciplinary boundaries in order to compete for jurisdictional victories. Such competition is guided by three decks of cards, which highlight the impact of professional, societal, and technological factors. Beyond offering a novel approach to architectural historiography, Jurisdiction: The Board Game reveals the ways in which individual professions leverage their expertise as an instrument of power within larger society.
