Abstract
There are several facets to the architecture of the setting of Warhammer 40,000. This has evolved over time, but grounded in the artwork of a range of early contributors such as John Blanche, Ian Miller and Jes Goodwin.
The use of scale models in architectural practice intersects with the hobbyists of Warhammer, and a practice of model-making – whether from kits sold by Games Workshop – or designed and built by gamers and model-makers has emerged. The literature around architectural models discusses the status of these objects, but rarely considers non-professional and non-design aspects of models and their uses.
The concepts of joy through materiality and re-enactment or mimesis is introduced by anthropologist Petra Kalshoven’s ethnographic study of tabletop wargaming (2012), even where the terrain concerned is mythical or fictional.
Modelling the terrain is a sophisticated and nuanced skilled practice within the hobby, with aspects such as design and materiality, conforming to rules and accommodating the properties of the miniatures themselves, and developments of 3D printing in the wider hobby.
More than this, the stylistics of this very British science fiction are largely rooted in Gothic and Gothic Revival architecture often extrapolated from early artists’ representations of the setting and informing commercial products. Further elaborations make use of pod and capsule architecture reminiscent of the work of Archigram in the 1960s or scrap welded together in extreme adaptive re-use such as is found in Earthship construction techniques. Even the industrial aesthetic has a common ancestor in the British High Tech architecture movement with the external pipes and exposed structure of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster’s early work.
The paper will discuss the symbolism of the Warhammer 40,000 fabula, making use of theories of narrative and validation through production design from film studies where a combination of the uncanny and familiar allows film viewers and by extension gamers, to find a stable hook for how this dystopian future universe might work beyond the confines of their games and other architectural tropes within the worlds of Warhammer as cultural artefacts informed by and informing attitudes towards architecture.
Author bio
Ray Lucas is Reader in Architecture at Manchester School of Architecture, where he teaches in the Flux Atelier and is co-leader of the Heritage & Humanities Research Group. His publications include Research Methods for Architecture (2016), Drawing Parallels (2019), Architecture, Festival and the City (2019), and Anthropology for Architects (2020). His work explores the intersections between architecture and anthropology, how knowledge is produced via models and drawings, and the relationship between film and architecture.
