Taubman College’s Cyrus Peñarroyo has co-developed an innovative board game that allows players to redevelop vacant buildings while role-playing as different stakeholders.
The game, “Holding Pattern,” introduces participants to the complex process of vacant building reuse. Players role-play as city agencies, community development corporations, developers, businesses, and other groups that work through the process of redeveloping vacant property, including updating zoning and acquiring finances.
With help from the Taubman Visualization Lab, or TVLab, Peñarroyo worked with De Peter Yi, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati, and research assistants to develop the collaborative project. The game was introduced at a community workshop hosted by the Cincinnati Reuse Collective.
“What I find interesting about the game is that it demonstrates how incorporating digital media as part of a collaborative design process can help people see the world anew,” said Peñarroyo, assistant professor of architecture. “The game also helps players learn how to navigate unfamiliar situations and dynamics and how to work together towards common goals.”
The game board is composed of numerous tiles that represent different vacant buildings in Cincinnati, and it also features a digital component. Using resources from the TVLab Fund for Experimental Inquiry, Peñarroyo and his assistant Xuanshu Lin, M.U.R.P. ’25, developed augmented reality models for each tile that change throughout the game. These models, which can be displayed on a mobile device or large screen, allow players to see how their actions change the buildings over time.
The TVLab is a collaborative space equipped with extended reality technologies, such as augmented reality and 3D scanning. In 2024, the lab invited Taubman College faculty to engage in experimental projects through the Fund for Experimental Inquiry, ultimately selecting five projects to continue their research using the TVLab’s resources.
Peñarroyo said Holding Pattern could have been made without the digital component, but bringing all these recognizable structures together and showing changes happen in real-time enhanced the ability of players to comprehend how their choices impact the built environment.
