Archinect - Features

How Digital Spaces Can Shape Cities as We Exit the Pandemic

2021-04-20T17:50:00-04:00

In May 2019, Nike released Nike Fit Digital Foot Measurement, an app that creates hyper-accurate sizing for its shoes by scanning the user’s feet through the camera of a smartphone. The reactions to this novel idea felt like another blow to a struggling typology, the shopping mall. People clamored for more augmented reality tools in the fashion industry that would limit the need for visiting physical shopping malls, for more neoteric features in digital spaces for online shopping, and for comfort in the absence of tangible architecture. With an evolving digital space that includes social media, virtual reality platforms, gaming worlds, online shopping platforms, and many others, public spaces have lost the title of being anchor social spaces while digital spaces are slowly becoming traditional ways of interacting in public life. In the quest for better cities, digital spaces might be a friend or foe to architecture, but as the pandemic forced cities to go on breaks, it’s a reflectio...

Discussing Technology and 'Architecture as Transient Media' With Güvenç Özel and Benjamin Ennemoser of UCLA's IDEAS Technology Studio

2021-02-19T13:39:00-05:00

Architecture is currently at the cusp of a paradigm shift, where the environments we occupy are becoming increasingly virtual and mobile. Considered as an ecosystem of technologies rather than a tectonic assemblage of materials, architecture is shifting toward a non-static and non-physical form of experience. This opens up the potential for it to be considered as a transdisciplinary medium that merges the worlds of fabrication, gaming, and media design.

The IDEAS Technology Studio, one of four studios offered as part of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (M.S.AUD) program, investigates the design of new media in digital and physical forms and its potential to radically transform the human experience. Recognized as a leading research institution UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is also a part of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. This unique blend and integration of departments allow both students and faculty "to connect ...

Investigating the Emerging Field of XR and Its Applications in Architecture, With Popular YouTuber and Software Developer Matthew Hallberg

2021-02-04T14:26:00-05:00

In this second installment of our 4-part series Designers in Tech, Alessio Grancini, Prototyper Engineer at Magic Leap and ex-Morphosis XR developer, speaks with Matthew Hallberg about his work and research into Extended Reality (XR) and its potential in architecture and urban design.

With 50k+ subscribers, Third Aurora Software Developer and YouTuber Matthew Hallberg is well known for speculative cutting edge prototypes and demos that feature the most recent technologies available in the field of XR.

Designers in Tech: How Architecture Is Unlocking the Potential of New Emerging Technologies

2021-02-03T14:01:00-05:00

As 2021 starts, there is growing evidence that technologies connecting us together are scaling up the game. The COVID-19 lockdown has introduced a wider community to more new emerging technologies, like VR and AR, and we find ourselves integrating more smart devices into our daily lives. As the digital environment grows and the meaning of space starts shifting, the field of design and architecture is preparing to explore new media and expand its domain. In this miniseries, we are taking a closer look at a number of emerging technologies and software applications that are building the foundation of the future understanding of space. We are doing it, with the expertise of 4 guests that deal with the future of technologies in their everyday life in a series of four installments.

Strapping on the Sacred: When Religion Enters Virtual Reality

2016-12-15T12:14:00-05:00

A few months ago, I found myself a lone skeptic in a sea of believers at the VR L.A. Expo. I watched heads tilt toward the sky (then the ground, then side to side). I navigated long lines that snaked through a grid of cardboard booths, filled with eager believers awaiting communion not with God but with pixels. I heard the feverish whispers of the prophets of our 2D wilderness (they who consume Soylent instead of locusts and honey). A New World is coming, they said.

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.