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Architecture and construction

Architecture and construction

Times are in GMT in October 28, 29 & 30

Re-appropriation of urban space by augmented reality

Re-appropriation of urban space by augmented reality

For the past few years, we have been living in a hyper-connected world in terms of communication and information exchange. But paradoxically, this world is also hyper disconnected from urban space and the urban environment. More and more, users are behind screens, performing activities that previously required going out, visiting, moving. In my talk, I will try to show how new AR technologies can help break this isolation of users and bring them back to urban space and to real life. This is a major challenge, psychologically, socially and economically. More concretely, I will present scenarios of AR applications making it possible to re-appropriate urban space and to enhance it. Examples of cultural applications, entertainment applications, commercial applications, utility applications, will be exhibited. I will also list the technological challenges to achieve these scenarios and the state of the art in this area.

Experiencing the city of tomorrow, AR for spatial decision making

Experiencing the city of tomorrow, AR for spatial decision making

Augmented reality provides an unique opportunity to merge digital content with the real world. Therefore, the urban planning department of the city of Zürich has developed its own AR planning tool: HoloPlanning. In this talk, we will look at a number of HoloPlanning use cases within the fields of architecture and construction. Based on these examples, we will then examine the various challenges faced when interacting with "virtual" content. Whenever available, suitable solutions are discussed and personal learnings of 3+ years with HoloPlanning shared.

Designing for the user: the potential of extended reality for architectural design

Designing for the user: the potential of extended reality for architectural design

Understanding how users will behave in an as-yet-unbuilt space is a challenging task that architects are constantly faced by. One way to approach this challenge is to conduct behavioural experiments, which allows for the exact behaviour of participants in a space to be tracked and monitored. Such behavioural experiments can be conducted in real or virtual spaces. This talk discussed the potential for architectural design of conducting behavioural experiments in virtual environments. Different types of medium and immersion are discussed, spanning virtual, mixed and augmented reality.

Virtual cities, visuospatial memory and aging

Virtual cities, visuospatial memory and aging

In this talk, we will revisit the aging and visuospatial memory in the context of navigation. More specifically from the perspective of designing technologies that may support older individuals in navigation related tasks.

After an overview of our current understanding of how aging affects visuospatial memory, we will examine how one can design content for extended reality technologies to support navigation-related tasks in urban environments for aging individuals while maintaining or even increasing cognitive reserve.