Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture

Designing in Mixed Realities

Sara Eloy, Anette Kreutzberg, Ioanna Symeonidou, Sara Eloy, Anette Kreutzberg, Ioanna Symeonidou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000430851
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Arquitectura general

Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture: Designing in Mixed Realities presents a curated selection of projects and texts contributed by leading international architects and designers who are using virtual reality technologies in their design process. It triggers discussion and debate on exploring the aesthetic potential and establishing its language as an expressive medium in architectural design. Although virtual reality is not new and the technology has evolved rapidly, the aesthetic potential of the medium is still emerging and there is a great deal more to explore.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the current use of virtual reality technologies in the architectural design process. Contributions are presented in six parts, fully illustrated with over 150 images.

Recent projects presented are distributed in five themes: introduction to mixed realities; space and form; context and ambiguity; materiality and movement; body and social. Each theme includes richly illustrated essays by leading academics and practitioners, including those from Zaha Hadid Architects and MVRDV, detailing their design process using data-driven methodologies.

Virtual Aesthetics in Architecture expands the use of technology per se and focuses on how architecture can benefit from its aesthetic potential during the design process. A must-read for practitioners, academics, and students interested in cutting-edge digital design.

PART 1
Introduction

The Visual Aesthetics of Architecture

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183105-1

This introductory section of the book addresses the topic of ‘Visual Aesthetics of Architecture’, comprising five chapters in which the authors provide an overview of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in architecture and the aesthetic paradigm they bring to the discipline.

Henri Achten follows the developments of VR and AR from a historical point of view, providing the reader with a concise history of these technologies in architecture. He summarizes a number of important milestones from the 1950s to the present day, highlighting the wide range of applications of immersive technologies in architecture and recent developments in academic institutions and pioneering research teams around the world.

From a more philosophical point of view, Federico Ruberto offers an insight into the architectonic of VR. Ruberto discusses the border between the “virtual” and the “physical” (ideal/real) influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and epistemological constructivism, alluding to the metaphilosophy of François Laruelle. This contribution offers a new perspective on the real/ideal dyad through a renewed engagement with fiction.

Helmut Kinzler et al. discuss the emergence of cybernetic aesthetics present in the work of Zaha Hadid Architects. Considering the present-day speed of communication and contemporary developments in machine learning, Kinzler et al. question contemporary aesthetics, affirming that never before has our understanding of beauty been so broadly and diversely communicated, reciprocated, and challenged. They contrast the concept of the superindividual with creative collectives and the role of VR within this transition, presenting case studies that reveal the influence of cybernetic culture in architecture.

Questioning the capacity of VR for enhanced ‘authenticity’ of the first-person experience in architecture, Sean Pickersgill affirms that there is a fundamental tension between the different modes of decision-making in architectural design and the particular focus on phenomenal reality that VR promotes. This contribution discusses the evolution of representational technologies in architecture, from 3D models and animations to immersive experiences, speculating on the capacity of VR to highlight ‘pliability and brilliance’ as aspects of virtual realities.

Immersive technologies promise to reshape aspects of architectural design, as they provide an interface for visiting, experiencing, sharing, and evaluating the designs, datasets, models, and increasingly data-rich buildings that result from the design process. Dustin Schipper and Brittney Holmes offer a review of the ways in which architects engage with immersive technologies. They discuss the potential of such technologies to influence the design process today and in the future, and their integration into society and the built environment as the various immersive technologies reach maturity.

Follow the QR-code to navigate through the online content of Part 1.

1
A CONCISE HISTORY OF VR/AR IN ARCHITECTURE

Henri Achten

DOI: 10.4324/9781003183105-2

A concise history of virtual reality (VR) and augmented Reality (AR) in architecture inevitably requires a broad brush, omitting a lot of detail and neglecting many careful considerations from past decades. A certain myopia distorts the overview, since I rely mostly on English-language publications on the topic which disregard a large portion of the work done in South America, for example, or in the French-speaking research community which I got to know through two research stays at the excellent Lab-STICC¹ in Brest, France. Another limitation concerns the sometimes surprisingly scarce documentation on sources, especially for the early days. Moreover, highlighting certain advances may give the impression that inventions and developments were isolated events. However, VR and AR were developed in a ‘kettle’, informed by an extremely diverse group of scientists, engineers, artists, writers, and philosophers. Thus, much as we like to celebrate the individual, milestones really are the products of their age, reflecting many different influences.

Yet another caveat concerns me, as the author of this overview. I am in no way a specialist in either field, although I did have the privilege of witnessing the work of VR pioneers Walther Roelen, Sjoerd Buma, and Jo Mantelers at my alma mater, Eindhoven University of Technology, from the early 1980s onwards (Achten et al., 1999), and later in the Design Systems group headed by Bauke de Vries (Vries et al., 2003). As a tech-enthusiast, I went to mind-blowing events such as Doors of Perception,² read the magazine Wired and my fair share of SF, and firmly believed that VRML was the future. In recent years, I had the pleasure of working with Andrew Vandemoere at KU Leuven (Nguyen et al., 2020). Hence, what follows is my understanding of the developments and what has caught my attention over the past 35 years.

At the outset, it is important to define what VR and AR are. I will use this definition as a reference point to indicate the differences when they occur, rather than as a final one. In the beginning, people did not really make rigid distinctions between the terms, as VR was considered augmented reality and vice versa, and they only developed into separate branches later.

Virtual reality can be understood as technology for an immersive perception of a digital model, in such a way that the person using it has the impression that they are inside the model.

Augmented reality can be understood as the coupling of physical objects and digital processes in such a way that any manipulation of one has a causal effect on the other.

The distinguishing feature between the two is that VR attempts to draw the individual completely inside a digital world that is remote from the real world, whereas AR is always tightly coupled with the real world.

The development we now understand as VR is the older of the two. For the current purposes, I will limit myself to the history that most closely resembles mainstream VR technology. Within the five basic human senses, VR predominantly focuses on sight (followed, in descending order, by sound, touch, smell, and taste). Thus, the centrepiece of any VR technology is the display. In order to experience the sensation of being inside the display, the projection works either by placing it very close to the eye (using a helmet or glasses) or enclosing the individual within a wide area projection on one or several large screens. Both types of projection can evoke very strong experiences of immersion, even to the extent that perceived movement inside VR actually has physical effects (nausea or problems with balance).

VR purists would draw the line here, but the tricky part in the definition of VR lies in the phrase ‘sense of immersion’, which is a rather flexible criterion. ‘Being immersed’ is not a passive act, but a human capacity. Watching a movie or reading a book can give you the feeling of ‘being there’, while playing with scale models can give you the sense of being in the model: the key point is that you establish some kind of emotional or anticipatory relationship. What distinguishes VR from a good book, or a great movie, is the digital aspect that is being displayed for the user (usually the virtual part of VR). The emotional or anticipatory relationship is established through real-time graphics that are shown on the display. The real-time feedback creates a strong bond between what you do (changing your viewpoint or effecting some action) and the response in the display (an immediately changed perspective or reaction). The implication is that you do not need a head-mounted display or a cave to experience immersion in VR—a simple computer screen suffices.

In a way, VR can be seen as a development in theatre and movie-making. By nature, theatre and movies present an immersive experience, on stage and on the big screen. American cinema-tographer Morton Heilig (1926–1997) tried to break through the boundaries of movie-making in the 1950s when he created the Sensorama Simulator.³ It offered a comprehensive single-person 3D-movie experience, complete with sound and smell, wind, and motion. It worked with pre-recorded film, hence the narrative for each use was always the same (there were films for motor-riding, go-karting, helicopter, bicycle, and a belly dancer).⁴

What if the content is not pre-recorded but, thanks to the computer, can be generated on the spot, as the creator or user demands? Ivan Sutherland (born 1938), the famed father of today’s CAD systems with his 1963 Sketchpad PhD thesis, gave a lecture at the IFIP Congress (Sutherland, 1965) entitled The Ultimate Display. The final section reflected on the lasting dream of Virtual Reality, as a real substitute for reality:

The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.

(Sutherland, 1965, p. 508)

As a side note, a chair, handcuffs, and plenty of bullets are specifically emphasized visual elements in Morpheus’ interrogation scene and Neo’s subsequent rescue in the 1999 film The Matrix: in a sense, the film deals with the ultimate display Sutherland had described 34 years earlier.

Three years later, the same Ivan Sutherland presented a working prototype for a stereoscopic head-mounted display (Sutherland, 1968). The head-mounted display (HMD hereafter) projects a separate digital image for each eye, thus offering depth information. The position and orientation of the HMD was measured by an arm attached to the ceiling and linked to the HMD (aptly nicknamed the Sword of Damocles). By immediately tracking the user’s head position and orientation, the computer would generate an updated 3D view of the model displayed in the HMD. It must be noted that, for this system to work, everything had to be invented by Sutherland and his team. Apart from the displays and the measuring of head position and orientation, especially hidden line removal, clipping of elements outside the viewing space, and perspective drawing, needed to be fast enough to support real-time graphics.

The world of ideas, inventions, and research condensed around the term ‘virtual reality’ when it was first coined in 1987 by Jaron Lanier (born 1960) (no definite source for this claim can be found). Earlier, Myron Krueger had characterized his work as “artificial reality” (Krueger, 1983), but this term did not catch on. The importance of the term was that it acquired an identity outside the community of people involved in the research, leading to increasing awareness and the spread of the research to areas had not previously used VR.

The term ‘augmented reality’ was first used by Thomas Caudell in his work for Boeing where, as part of their work, the HMD (called a HUDset) was taken out of the laboratory and into the aircraft assembly hall. HUD, or ...