The Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Technological Reproductions of Historic Environments

Definitions

Virtual Reality (VR), sometimes referred to as immersive multimedia, is a computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds. Virtual reality can recreate sensory experiences, which include virtual taste, sight, smell, sound, touch, etc.

Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

VR and AR technologies are nothing new. Since Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir David Brewster’s 1838 stereoscope (image 1) artists and technologists have been in search of new and innovative ways to create 3D experiences and immersive recreations of the real world.

Image 1 Wheatstone and Brewster’s stereoscope (1838)

However, with the advent of ever expanding electronic platforms and manufacturing technology, the opportunities for digitally and physically representing historic environments have never been greater.  Commonly, analog AR technology already exists through site-specific installations like those found in Carnutum, Austria (image 2) recreating the Roman Heidentor (heathen’s gate) for the benefit of visitors.  Similar VR technology re-creates the caves of Lascaux directly to your personal computer (web link).  

image 2 Augmented reality station of the Heidentor in Carnutum, Australia (2004)

With the emergence of new digital platforms like the Oculus Rift, opportunities for VR/AR to recreate historic contexts are becoming more and more easily accessible.  3D modeling and rendering technology also allows for technology platforms to recreate historic contexts with ever-greater degrees of precision and realism.  Games like Assassin’s Creed recreate in full detail historic moments of Boston, Rome, New York, Venice, and Paris for the viewer to explore and engage with, effectively immersing the player into the past and allowing the opportunity to explore history for him/herself.  How then can architects, designers, and heritage professionals prepare for future opportunities in the emerging world of virtual and augmented reality?

image 3 Players explore and engage with the urban context of Boston in Assassin’s Creed III (2012)

The answer lies in accessible platform integration and a healthy mix of market practices with private and academic research.  Where gaming technology is still limited to platforms that are not accessible to everyone (the price tag for an Oculus Rift hovers between $150 and $300), virtual and augmented reality can be made increasingly available to cell phones vis-a-vis the built in gyroscope found in almost all smartphone devices.  This gyroscope allows your phone to detect when it is being used in landscape or platform orientation, but it also allows for more specific shifts, such as knowing when you are looking North versus West, up versus down, etc.

For our class’s infill design challenge this semester I recreated our site in UnrealEngine 4.2, a software that integrates with Oculus Rift to create a first-person experience exploring the streets of Fishtown (image 4.1 and 4.2).  

image 4.1: recreation of Fishtown site in UnrealEngine looking south ( 2014)

image 4.2: recreation of Fishtown site in UnrealEngine looking north ( 2014)

At our final review in order to provide a more accessible, non-oculus experience I simply

printed out our project site at ⅛”=1’-0” scale onto two pieces of foam, held the two sides of the street apart from each other, and allowed critics to ‘explore’ the site for themselves (image 5).  I predict in the future it will be possible to create an urban context and architectural design on a mobile-platform-ready software so that reviewers (and in the working world, clients) can explore the design for themselves at the flick of a finger.

Image 5 physical recreation of Day Street printed at ⅛”=1’-0” scale onto two pieces of foam, held the two sides of the street apart from each other and used by critics to ‘explore’ our project site

Fall Sketches

This fall I have made it my goal to do one sketch per day.. even if it's just a gestural line drawing. Three and a half months in, my drawings mostly cover architectural representation, figure/portrait, and just plain fun representational doodles. Check out some of my favorites below, and keep up-to-date by following my Tumblr sketch-a-day blog here.

The more that I explore watercolors the more I realize that less is more. Although it's a lot easier to go through and outline the character/subject in pen or pencil before coming back through to watercolor over top, often times the plain simple watercolor drawings are a lot more interesting to look at and allow a lot more room for interpretation than the crisp-line pen drawings.

Philadelphia's blue horizon

PMA at dusk

cafe lovebirds

Mt. Moriah cemetery gates

Fishtown site visit

monastery in western PA

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Lerner Center @ Penn

Urbanized

Fairmount Park visitor's center

the log lady

Lothlorien

Reading Viaduct

Natalia Lena

Minas Tirith

Zaha Hadid's galaxy soho

Gandalf (more or less)

Rorschach

Working Thesis

It is no secret that urban centers around the world find their education systems in a state of economic and political upheaval. From first-world democracies to third-world dictatorships, the triple-threat of economic hardship, political ineptitude/corruption, and material/structural building deficiencies have rendered urban public education in a state of social and political crisis.

While some cities have been able to stabilize their public education system with national subsidies or private gifts and funding, dis-invested urban centers with an already spotted history of social and economic hardship are often at the brunt end of the totem pole when cities whose very economic and political survival is at stake make triage decisions about which schools to save, which districts in which they should re-invest, and which social and public policies to enact.

As the struggle between ever-greater suburbanization and re-urbanization of cities in the United States polarizes the nation into a culture of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, many public schools have closed either due to shifts toward charter- and private-school education or in response to changing urban and urban-fringe demographics.

This thesis explores the question of what cities and societies can do to redeem failing neighborhoods and urban cores through the adaptive re-use of abandoned public schools.  By analyzing the contextual, psychological, and political factors at play, this thesis proposes how one Philadelphia-area school can address contemporary urban challenges through its re-purposing into a new community asset.