Sandra Youkhana

Sandra is an Architect and Lecturer working across academic, cultural, and gaming industries. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Architecture and Design at UCL which focusses on the architecture of the Metaverse, exploring how the real world is extracted, altered, and applied to virtual environments. Her research investigates the agency of architecture in relation to emerging narrative technologies, arguing for its implicit importance in their development. Sandra’s work operates between the design of architectural interventions and speculative virtual worlds, developing design research and critical theory that underpins their connection.

She is a co-founder of the design research studio You+Pea with Luke Pearson, and has taught, exhibited and lectured on the relationship between architecture and videogame technologies worldwide, including a solo exhibition by You+Pea at the Royal Institute of British Architects combining a historic reading of Picturesque designs with game environments, experienced through projections. Further games have been exhibited at events such as Now Play This at Somerset House, EGX 2019 and the Architekturmuseum der Tum in Munich. Her work has been featured in both academic and mainstream press, including EDGE magazine, The Yale Architecture Journal, Blueprint, and Volume Magazine. She has consulted for game developers, technology companies, and city planners.

Sandra has taught across various postgraduate programmes including Urban Design, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture, and co-founded the Videogame Urbanism studio at the Bartlett which promotes the use of videogame technologies to engage new participants in the design of cities.

Sandra is co-author of the forthcoming book Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds (Thames & Hudson, 2022), which maps environments from commercial videogames as a way of understanding their spatial composition in an architectural and urban context.