When schools ban books, the strategy often backfires on would-be censors, resulting in greater interest around illicit literature. Similarly,  when governments censor the media, groups like Reporters Without Borders spearhead efforts to make such censored material extra visible. Their Uncensored Library project brings together architecture and journalism in an unlikely virtual reality space: the interactive gaming world of Minecraft.

On the surface, Minecraft is a game of collaborative construction and its low-res look may not appear conducive to elements like: reading articles or even entire books in-game. But there are “items” within the game that effectively work like books with a theoretically infinite number of pages. Creators can transcribe text into these “books,” rendering them legible and downloadable. The books are then put in “chests” and organized in the virtual space for accessibility.

The idea, in part, is to work around normally filtered channels. The non-profit Reporters Without Borders has experience on this front with projects like the audio-centric Uncensored Playlist, which evaded censors by operating through music streaming services. In the Uncensored Library, the spatial design makes finding material easier, and allows for other forms of creation and interaction as well, such as a memorial to murdered journalists housed within the library’s walls.

“The style is Classical and formal, the kind of architecture you’d see in