reMIXED REALITY
The technology landscape is an extremely fluid and ever-changing reality that, to an extent, is present in all aspects of the current way of living, thinking, and working. We are now able to automate not just the manual and mundane tasks, but even more human-centric and seemingly more subjective skills with AI. In the field of architecture and design, this trend allowed us to redefine what is imaginable, what is doable, what is usable, – and iterate the process faster, more thoroughly, more flexibly. In urbanism, this allowed us to bridge the gap between scales, times, and participants – and evaluate ideas with minimal upfront cost, thus drastically pushing the rate and quality of development. What’s more, we now carry incredibly powerful devices, even in our pockets, allowing more communication potential, embedding seamless connection to our immediate and remote environments. Yet as mainstream digital tools grow more powerful, they also increasingly rely on opaque, fixed frameworks that can instead constrain creative exploration. Designers today face a dual challenge: our ideas demand more adaptable and, at times, composite interconnected sets of distinct tools, and our processes require new ways to articulate the layered reasoning that drives them.
This course introduces students to the mindset and workflow of creating bespoke and unique purpose-built design tools. Unlike the monolithic programs that we are used to day-to-day, sometimes a small, targeted, and tailored solution in the context of specific project or target audience needs, – can be preferred and achieve a more concentrated and specific impact or allow us to digitise aspects of the problem. Mixed Reality (MR), understood as a spectrum of spatial computing and communication technologies, offers a unique opportunity in architecture, urbanism, and related fields: it allows us to work to various extents directly within physical space while augmenting it with responsive digital information, interaction, and scale/time flexibility. Whether for immersive visualization, enriched communication of design intent, fabrication assistance, public engagement, or even playful gamification strategies, – MR provides a medium where spatial intuition and computational adaptability meet.
In this year’s concentrated dive-in seminar, students will use Unity as the primary development environment – further extending and customising with application of C# scripting and object-oriented thinking. Students are invited to explore within the umbrella of their thesis project contexts and build practical MR tools. Throughout the workshop, we will explore, evaluate, leverage, and repurpose well-established practices and tools from the gaming industry, such as approaches in user experience (UX) and interface design (UI), – to help students craft nonlinear, spatial forms of communication, directed toward juries, clients, citizens, or their own internal design processes.
At course completion the student will:
PROBLEM: Current urban investment decisions, particularly in social housing, are largely based on financial feasibility studies, static socio-economic indicators, and ESG-style metrics that fail to capture how people actually experience and use space and often overlook real-time behavioral dynamics: how people move, engage with space, perceive safety, or interact socially. In dense metropolitan environments like … Read more
As the generations who have grown up around video games reach an age where they are beginning to buy homes, architects should provide advanced and easily navigable interfaces for people to interact with architecture. We should provide basic information on project mission and sustainability etc. and then allow potential customers to explore the designs in … Read more
This project explores how light can respond to human emotions through biosignals. The main goal is to design an adaptive architectural space where lighting changes according to the user’s physiological data, such as EEG, ECG, and GSR. Instead of using light only for visibility, this research treats light as an empathic interface between the human … Read more
Lagoon Rescue is an interactive spatial platform that examines the resilience of coastal lagoon systems under climatic and human-induced pressures by simulating how sediment deficit, storm intensity, salinity intrusion, and wetland degradation drive ecological instability, and how targeted interventions can influence lagoon stability over time. Simulation Interaction The platform functions as a decision-making interface that … Read more
