Archinect - Features

Rendered reality: the VR journalism of Emblematic Group

2016-01-25T11:15:00-05:00

“We took all the 911 phone calls – because this is all we know, I mean everyone is conjecturing and everything, but this is all we know – and we animated them,” explained Michael Licht, co-founder and executive producer for the Emblematic Group, sitting in his Santa Monica laboratory. Helmed by Licht and the journalist Nonny de la Peña, the Group has pioneered the use of virtual reality technologies for journalism, using original audio and other information from real events as the source material for virtual reconstructions.

Stop the presses: Paul Goldberger's take on critical relevance in the social media age

2015-05-20T11:31:00-04:00

In architecture, the rise of the 21st century media landscape has created connective tissue where none used to exist: the day-to-day work of architecture used to be relatively obscure, and now it is spotlighted and deconstructed regularly. The most successful architects are not those who shun this newfound audience, but rather engage with it. Of course, this poses a challenge for architectural journalists. New work must now be evaluated not only in the context of the built environment, but in the virtual environment as well.