For centuries, architects have employed drawings and models to display and explain design plans. Virtual reality has turned things up a notch β some architects use the technology because it not only allows them to see a proposed building, it lets them get a sense of what it might feel like. On a more practical level, VR also allows nonarchitects β the public or a client β to register architectural concepts in more accessible ways.
To stand there and see how it works. It was fascinating as a client. You can come up with an idea and now you move through it. VR has historically been hyped to revolutionize film and gaming, but as the goggles become more economical and processing speeds are improved, the technology is now becoming more accessible to architects and designers.
Over the past few years, an increasing number of developers and real estate companies have used VR as a way of pitching unbuilt condos or showcasing a luxury home to buyers who might live in another city. Now more conceptually driven architects are beginning to use the technology as another tool in the design process. The design process at Morphosis still takes place in traditional software such as CATIA and Rhino, which is displayed on a two-dimensional computer screen.
But once a rendering is close to being fully fleshed out, it can then be transferred to VR β which offers some tantalizing architectural possibilities. Morphosis has been experimenting with VR for more than a year but has begun to use it more intensively during the last eight months. Keely Colcleugh, the founder of Kilograph , a Los Angeles-based design studio that creates renderings and visualizations for architectural and real estate firms, has seen an uptick in demand for virtual reality walk-throughs of buildings over the last several years.
The latter, notes Colcleugh, is commonly used in gaming. But none of this means that virtual reality will replace traditional forms of design any time soon. VR can be inflexible, requiring a high volume of data to render an idea. Architecture, on the other hand, often begins with a simple line or a loose arrangement of building blocks. Nam notes that the design process at Gehry Partners is still driven by drawings digital and otherwise and the creation of a 3-D model some rendered in software, others built at various scales with physical materials.
