Archinect - News

Virtually Inevitable – VR and AR, IRL on Archinect Sessions #51

2016-02-04T18:43:00-05:00

Virtual Reality is very much here, in all its messy, beautiful, uncanny glory. The gee-whiz factor notwithstanding, the technology holds a bevy of architectural applications and implications, and manages to hold a mirror up to the built environment to show us things that we couldn't understand before.

This episode, we discuss a host of recent VR stories, from the narrative VR journalism of Emblematic Group to Thorsten Wiedemann's VR performance art, an AR helmet that streamlines the construction site and VR-value-added rendering services for firms.

Joining us on this VR-trip is Rebecca Howard, freshly returned from New York where she developed video content for the Times, and helped them launch their entry into VR content.

Listen to episode 51 of Archinect Sessions, "Virtually Inevitable":

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Man spends 48 hours in VR without interruption – and survives

2016-01-27T17:17:00-05:00

After staging [a 48-hr long continuous VR experience], [Thorsten] Wiedemann is convinced that “long period VR trips” are possible, and that current technology is sufficient for such purposes. The only problem was when he had a panic attack after the 25th hour, when he was pretty close to giving up. “I had no physical problems, no burning eyes, killing headaches or nausea,” Wiedemann says. “The path to the future is now prepared..."

Related:

"A blueprint can give you an idea, but this cements it for you.” – VR's promising future in architectural communications

2016-01-25T18:00:00-05:00

LHB has become one of the nation’s first design firms to incorporate virtual reality, or VR, across the sweep of its in-house teams [...] “With VR, you can inhabit the space in full scale...You get a far more physical sense of what that space is going to be.” [...] Virtual reality also has potential to be “the great equalizer,” LHB’s Fischer noted. A middle-school maintenance worker can put on a VR headset and notice design flaws that might go unnoticed by project managers.

Using virtual reality to bridge the gap between architect and client

2015-09-11T18:16:00-04:00

architects at Tsoi/Kobus & Associates in Cambridge have started using the processing system that powers virtual reality games to put clients inside development projects before they are built. Using a cloud-based system called Revizto, architects can create a digital hospital down to the last brick, and then invite a client to “walk” through the space to see if the ceilings are high enough or the windows provide enough light.

Firms like Tsoi/Kobus are beginning to experiment with multiple immersive, interactive media for clients to tour buildings, often in advance of making any physical models. Clients can be virtually transported into the design's space by wearing an Oculus VR headset, or by being inside a specially outfitted room with laser projections, while the architect walks them through. The commentary is recorded and then filed back into the iterative design process.

More from VR's influence on architecture:

Drury architecture students are experimenting with virtual reality technology Oculus Rift

2014-04-11T11:24:00-04:00

For the last 18 months, Assistant Professor David Beach and senior architecture student Sam McBride have been working on a program that allows designers and clients alike to physically experience a building...before a single brick is laid. This designing process Beach and McBride have developed is highly interactive. It focuses on making technology like this available for architects around the world. What's more, systems like this are becoming more available for consumers.