Technology | IDEAS

Last September, SWA’s innovation lab, xl, produced its “Report on the Current State of Immersive Environments for Design.” It included an assessment of the emerging technologies of 360 video, spherical panoramas, virtual reality, and mixed reality for design. As the lab’s co-leaders, we had recognized throughout the firm a desire to use virtual reality in practice, but also found there was little understanding of a wider palette of tools and options with the same perceptual qualities. We made a survey of these different emerging technologies, grouping them together and calling them “Immersive Environments.” We circulated the resulting report among the designers in the firm’s seven offices and in our new affiliate office, SWA/Balsley.

The report was part of a larger project which explored new advances in visualization and simulation for design. It sought to experiment with and push these emerging technologies to discover their strengths, limitations, and opportunities. We ran a demo day with four types of immersive environments in nine different configurations, using our designers as “guinea pigs,” and got feedback from our Southern California studios. Concurrently, we learned from George Kutnar’s experiences in the Los Angeles studio testing VR with a client and shooting a 360 video. We talked with developers of virtual reality and mixed reality tools about current capacities and technological advances on the horizon. We have also talked to city planners in municipal and private practice about the ways they have used immersive tools in their work. Our approach to the technologies was critical and evaluative, leading toward an understanding of the role these new tools could play in the future of design. As an innovation lab at an urban design and landscape architecture firm, part of our mission is to assess, experiment with, and “try to break” emerging technologies. Much of what we were reading about VR and related technologies was only celebratory rather than critical or evaluative. We wanted to find out if immersive technologies are actually the future of the design process. And, if so, how might they operate?

A few months later, after supporting design teams using immersive technologies in our Los Angeles and San Francisco studios, we want to share our findings. We think the design industry could benefit from exchanging ideas about these tools, so that designers can aid in developing them faster and better for our needs. Recent advances in the gaming industry have pushed virtual reality and mixed reality forward—think of Minecraft VR and the mobile phone game phenomenon Pokemon Go. Journalists, POV camera companies, and the film industry are experimenting with 360 video formats and distribution: GoPro X Games videos, Sundance shorts, and The New York Times VR. We think the AEC industry needs to be an early adopter and collaborator in developing the design and visualization tools it requires. Otherwise we risk being on the receiving end of tools and technologies that could look like a game or feel like a GoPro video. With this in mind, we’re sharing what we’ve developed as an open source resource in order to further accelerate exploration and experimentation in the industry. We are excited to share our experiences with the larger design community, and hope you are too.

Look for more on the Immersive Environments project in Mark magazine; Planning magazine will feature tips on using immersive tools in urban planning; both out this spring.

Check out xl’s “Report on the Current State of Immersive Environments for Design” here.

Images from the Demo Day and Immersive Environments project are available here:

The project and report were led by Emily Schlickman and Anya Domlesky through xl: Experiments in Landscape and Urbanism, SWA’s innovation lab. Both Emily and Anya are in the Sausalito, California studio.

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Anya Domlesky Emily Schlickman
in Education, News, Technology
on 25 January, 2017

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

Bioengineering achievements fascinate me. A few years ago, scientists at Harvard and Caltech successfully created an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat’s heart. Genetically it was still a rat, but morphologically and functionally, a jellyfish. As technology advances, we are able to mimic natures and create new ones in terms of forms and processes. More important than showing off our intellectual advancement, however, is the belief that we can make our lives better, even if it’s sometimes risky. That valuable “jellyfish” is a study model for a muscular pump for medical purposes rather than simply an experiment in the name of creativity.

So what is the implication here for the field of landscape architecture? We define ourselves as form makers (which is probably one of the coolest things I can think of). What’s even cooler is that we understand the drivers of certain forms and are usually good at predicting consequences. All the knowledge with which we prepare ourselves is targeted toward creating something wonderful and beneficial. This makes perfect sense to me, with one exception: as long as we practice we are bound to have an end product. Are those products sustainable beyond the foreseeable future, especially when everything keeps evolving faster and faster? Consider that we may want to begin thinking of our work as a series of prototypes that carry the expectation of improvements, rather than ends in themselves.

It can be very liberating to change our perspective on our work: We are developing prototypes for the future, and channeling our knowledge about that future into the best scenarios we can imagine. It is exciting to see these prototypes getting deployed and to watch how they evolve, are adapted, or even get destroyed, which is a realistic aspect of our new philosophy. If we acknowledge that everything is no longer based on a fixed principle, as a collective group we should be able to take more risks and be more aggressive, and in cleverer ways. Perhaps we should define ourselves as experimentalists. Although we are good at predicting outcomes based on existing conditions, it gets much harder when we don’t even know what those conditions might be. Admittedly, our visions are somewhat limited by that lack of knowledge.

Accepting these facts, I propose that the products we create now be carriers of different possibilities, even as they promote our preferences and are sometimes limited to their contexts. Like the “jellyfish,” the response they get from our users is what makes the future better.

So stay bodacious.

Originally from Hefei, China, Haoyang has been working in SWA’s Laguna Beach Office for over a year. He holds a master of landscape architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of landscape architecture from Nanjing Agricultural University.

Image of engineered cardiac muscle courtesy of the California Institute of Technology.

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Haoyang Wang
in Technology
on 30 July, 2015

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

Recently I’ve taken notice of the emergence of responsive systems in art and architecture. I’m fascinated by their potential, and hopeful that ways to begin exploring their applicability to our field will become more prevalent. For those unfamiliar with such work, responsive systems are those capable of adapting to complex environmental and social conditions. They… Read more »

For the Al Bahar Towers in Abu Dhabi (2012), architecture firm AEDAS employed a responsive façade programmed to adapt to the movement of the sun as a way to reduce solar gain and glare. Modules taking clues from the traditional Islamic lattice shading devices called mashrabiya were developed using parametric software to reduce solar gain by an estimated 50 percent. Throughout the course of the day, the building façade becomes animated, with varying proportions of the façade becoming visible depending on the unique lighting condition.

The work of artist Daan Roosegaarde is also of interest regarding responsive systems. His studio “creates interactive designs that explore the dynamic relation between people, technology, and space.” Roosegaarde’s installations blur the line between art and landscape architecture, responding to both human interaction and environmental conditions and creating dynamic and rich experiential environments. In “Dune 4.2,” 60 meters worth of variable height fibers with embedded LEDs were installed along the Maas River in Rotterdam. These fibers brighten and dim according to the interaction with passersby, creating an artificial landscape where “city, nature and people meet.”

These are but two examples of many such exciting efforts, and signal the remarkable scale range of responsive systems. They also represent interesting case studies for how such systems might be applicable to landscape architecture.

With the pronounced focus on resiliency in recent years, perhaps responsive systems hold potential to help build in a layer of contingency against storm surges. As the technology becomes cheaper and more available, shade structures might be designed that employ such systems to ensure maximum coverage throughout the year. Or, could systems respond to rainfall, opening and closing with the aim of capturing rainwater and providing shade?

Many questions remain and much exploration needs to be done in order to make such leaps a reality, but it’s important to constantly explore and innovate to remain at the forefront of the design discourse.

Photo of “Dune 4.2″ courtesy of Daan Roosegaarde.

For more information and examples of responsive systems:

https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/projects/#dune-4-2

http://www.archdaily.com/270592/al-bahar-towers-responsive-facade-aedas/

http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/responsive-environments

http://www.rex-ny.com/work/surya/\

https://aainter10fabrizio.wordpress.com/

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Donny Zellefrow
in Technology
on 12 December, 2014

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

In the past five to ten years, the increased use of computational/parametric tools within the design professions has been at the forefront of conversations among academics and professionals. Although most commonly used in architecture for the design and fabrication of complex forms, these tools, in combination with new technologies, have the potential to fundamentally transform… Read more »

Computational design tools can generally be applied to professional practice in three broad categories: Design/Fabrication; Simulation; and Mapping/Environmental Modeling.

The first is the most typical application, in which digital tools are used to generate designs for various structures and components in the landscape. These are then rationalized to generate construction and/or shop drawings to facilitate fabrication (i.e., the paneling and unrolling of a curved steel planter wall). The last two categories, however, hold the most potential for landscape architects. Multiple parametric software and plug-ins allow for rapid, precise testing of various site conditions and constraints such as water flow/flood events—issues that are increasingly important to have an accurate understanding of early in the design development process. Perhaps most interesting is the emergence of 3-D terrestrial scanning as an informative tool for mapping and modeling existing conditions.

At the start of every new project, landscape architects rely on a set of base files to introduce us to the site and to kickstart the analysis/design process. The quality, accuracy, and legibility of these base files varies drastically by project type and location and can often be a serious headache to deal with. Even when an accurate survey is provided, it is a 2-D file whose usefulness is limited when it comes to visualizing design options. For instance, a competition may not have an up-to-date survey available to download and we are forced to make an educated guess regarding site characteristics such as topography and hydrology.

This was the case for a recent competition in China that the LA office worked on. Although we received a number of base files, none had any topographic data, and information in one file would conflict with what was meant to be the same information in another. In our quest for accurate site data, we took this as an opportunity to explore the use of publicly available information from other sources. Using the software Grasshopper (a graphical algorithm editor for Rhino 3-D modeling) as an intermediary, we obtained information on roads, highways, water bodies, rail lines, and building footprints from OpenStreetMap. We were also able to generate an accurate 3-D model of the regional terrain using material from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), operated by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech. SRTM employs shuttle radar technology to create high-resolution digital elevation models for regions around the world.

The data proved to be very useful to our design process as we were able to identify constraints and opportunities more quickly and accurately. As Christophe Girot, the Chair of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, alluded to in a recent lecture at Harvard’s GSD, the future “survey” for large-scale landscape projects may be in three dimensions rather than two. This is an exciting time for the advancement of our understanding of the complexity of landscapes!

Collapse post

Cancel