Real Space-Virtual Space
Aesthetics, Architecture, and Immersive Environments
research: conference
Real Space-Virtual Space
Aesthetics, Architecture, and Immersive Environments
In 1979 Ugo la Pietra curated a section of the 16th Milan Triennale entitled “Spazio reale-spazio virtuale” [Real Space-Virtual Space]. Through a series of installations, the architect investigated how audio-visual media generated an actual space and how that was related to the "real" space of the city (La Pietra 1979). La Pietra had long been interested in multimedia experimentation: his Immersioni [Immersions] (1967-70) were protovirtual environments composed of images, sounds, and wearable or inhabitable devices (La Pietra 1971). La Pietra's work, well before the spread of the technologies we now call virtual reality, emphasized the spatial, architectural and urban nature of audio-visual forms, opening up theoretical and practical models that redefined the relationship between the virtual and the real.
Inspired by these critical perspectives, the conference aims at investigating how "new" media – with a particular focus on the immersive environments of virtual reality (VR) and the emersive practices of augmented reality (AR) - create an artificial space of their own in dialogue with the design and perception of the architectural and urban space, fostering productive contaminations and intertwining.
Virtual reality headsets create an environment that subverts the traditional status of the image, in a way denying itself. Indeed, the image presents itself as unframed, immediate and immersive, in a word: an an-icon (Pinotti, Cavaletti 2020; Pinotti 2021). The spatial experience created by these devices, as well as the identity and performativity of the users, must be redefined and described anew (Hofer et al. 2018; Champion 2019). Therefore, it is necessary to reframe an aesthetic of the virtual space (Champion 2021a; Tavinor 2021) to investigate this specific experience which always involves the body, but, at the same time, excludes it.
VR and AR represent a new tool for architects and planners to rethink design in unprecedented perspectives (Virilio 1998; Bandi 2021, Parker 2021; Vilar et al. 2022). Those de-vices allow professionals, but also universities and academies, clients and citizens, to quasi-live the project, not only visualising it but inhabiting its space. In short, virtual realities change the way we represent and also our relationship with this representation.
Jaron Lanier, one of the firsts pioneers of virtual reality, has called this technology "a shared dream" (Lanier 2017), emphasising VR’s dreamlike component (Grossi 2021). This characteristic leads to another field of application: virtual space has the potential to become a poietic collector of unrealised projects, a tool for the re-enactment of destroyed buildings or utopian cities that come to life through the environmental image.
Beyond the headset lies the real city. Here, the vector from the virtual to the real changes direction (Milgram, Kishino 1994). Technologies such as augmented and mixed reality (MR) bring digital objects out of the urban fabric, both for practical (Duarte and Álvarez 2021; Sharma 2021) and creative purposes (Kot 2021; Pirandello 2021; Shokrani et al. 2021), redefining, in the wake of Manovich (2006), new poetics of augmented space. This perspective also includes the conservation and enhancement of architectural heritage that exploits these technologies to offer new forms of experience of sites and architecture (Champion 2021 b).
Furthermore, these practices enter into dialogue with the concepts of mediascapes (Appadurai 1996; Casetti 2018) and media city (McQuire 2008) that confirm and articulate the intimate relationship between landscape, urban fabric and media (Verhoeff 2012; 2020; Montani et al. 2018)
In conclusion, the hyphen that separates "real space" from "virtual space" must be understood here not as a hiatus, but as the expression of a continuum: a process of hybridization and fluidification toward a sort of transarchitecture (Novak 1991; n.d.), opening a threshold between reality and virtuality. In this fold, this conference will take place, spanning from theoretical moments to VR and AR experiences.
"Real Space-Virtual Space" is thus aimed at opening critical discussions and proposing research perspectives on topics such as:
- Mediarcheology of virtual architectural representation.
- Designing in VR.
- Phenomenology and Aesthetics of the Virtual Space.
- Participatory design and virtual technologies.
- Unrealised projects and virtual or augmented reality.
- Cyberspaces and imaginary/utopian architecture.
- Virtual reality and architectural heritage.
- VR as a training tool.
- Cities, media and virtual practices.
Please find below the full program.
The conference is open to the public, no fee or registration is required.
June 19, 2023
Welcome Address
Fabrizia Bandi, University of Milan
Dwelling Virtual and Augmented Spaces: Perceiving, Imagining and Sharing
Lunch Break
Erik Champion, University of South Australia
Reworking Architecture as Art in the Age of Virtual Replication
Fabrizio Banfi, Politecnico di Milano
Virtual Heritage: The Evolution of Interactivity, Immersion and Interoperability in HBIM and extended reality
Coffee Break
Arnaud Desjardins, Thibault Jorge, Femme Fatale Studio
The Dream Builders: Cenotaph for Newton VR Experience
June 20, 2023
Scott Mcquire, University of Melbourne
‘Use the /imagine Command’: urban encounters in mediated cities
Marcos Novak, University of California, Santa Barbara
Everting Immersion, Convolving Desire: Latent Architectures in Liquid Spaces
Lunch Break
Matteo Vegetti and Pietro Vitali, SUSPI, Mendrisio
Phenomenology of Space and Virtual Reality. An Experimental Course for Students in Interior Architecture
Massimiliano Savorra, Silvia La Placa, University of Pavia
Digital tools in Architectural History and Identity of Virtual Space. Some research and teaching experiences for the enhancement of Cultural heritage
Ugo La Pietra
Spazio Reale Spazio Virtuale
June 21, 2023
Elisângela Brito Pessoa Vilar, University of Lisbon
Looking for a Human-Centred Architecture – the role of Virtual Reality as an interaction environment
José Pareja‑Gómez, Zaha Hadid Architects
Architecture in the digital age
Lunch Break
Valentina Temporin, John Volpato, ULTRA Studio
Osaka ’70 VR Experience
Program
June 19, 2023
Welcome Address
Fabrizia Bandi, University of Milan
Dwelling Virtual and Augmented Spaces: Perceiving, Imagining and Sharing
Lunch Break
Erik Champion, University of South Australia
Reworking Architecture as Art in the Age of Virtual Replication
Fabrizio Banfi, Politecnico di Milano
Virtual Heritage: The Evolution of Interactivity, Immersion and Interoperability in HBIM and extended reality
Coffee Break
Arnaud Desjardins, Thibault Jorge, Femme Fatale Studio
The Dream Builders: Cenotaph for Newton VR Experience
June 20, 2023
Scott Mcquire, University of Melbourne
‘Use the /imagine Command’: urban encounters in mediated cities
Marcos Novak, University of California, Santa Barbara
Everting Immersion, Convolving Desire: Latent Architectures in Liquid Spaces
Lunch Break
Matteo Vegetti and Pietro Vitali, SUSPI, Mendrisio
Phenomenology of Space and Virtual Reality. An Experimental Course for Students in Interior Architecture
Massimiliano Savorra, Silvia La Placa, University of Pavia
Digital tools in Architectural History and Identity of Virtual Space. Some research and teaching experiences for the enhancement of Cultural heritage
Ugo La Pietra
Spazio Reale Spazio Virtuale
June 21, 2023
Elisângela Brito Pessoa Vilar, University of Lisbon
Looking for a Human-Centred Architecture – the role of Virtual Reality as an interaction environment
José Pareja‑Gómez, Zaha Hadid Architects
Architecture in the digital age
Lunch Break
Valentina Temporin, John Volpato, ULTRA Studio
Osaka ’70 VR Experience
Abstract and Bio
Fabrizia Bandi
University of Milan
Dwelling Virtual and Augmented Spaces: Perceiving, Imagining and Sharing
The concept of dwelling, as Bollnow states, is something intimately rooted in human spatiality. Today, virtual and augmented reality invite us to discover new ways of dwelling space, in one case completely immersed in an artificial world and in the other adding new content to our experience. How is this human spatiality reconfigured through these media? How is this image-space actually perceived? Architecture, inside the head-set, as Mitchel said, dematerialises while opening up to infinite creative possibilities. We can inhabit a space that will (or will never) be built, sharing not only its design vision, but also its spatial and perceptual experience. Through our smartphones, we can contaminate the urban scenario with images, further complicating the mediascape and, perhaps, creating new poietic forms. In both cases, virtual space emerges as a presentified vision of an imaginary, capable of suggesting new meanings to real space.
Fabrizia Bandi, graduated at University of Milano, is a PhD in Philosophical Sciences – Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts (University of Palermo 2016). Her main research topics are phenomenology and aesthetics, with particular regard to the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, aesthetics of architecture and art. She has been postdoctoral fellow at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Università della Svizzera Italiana) thanks to an Excellence fellowship of the FNS (Swiss National Science Foundation) dedicated to the concept of Freespace. She has been adjunct professor of the Aesthetics course at Politecnico of Milan, MSc programme Architectural Design and History (2016-2020). She is a member of the editorial staff of the journal Studi di Estetica as well as of the SIE (Italian Society of Aesthetics). In 2018 she has published the book La percezione armata. Esperienza estetica e immaginazione in Mikel Dufrenne (Mimesis).
University of Milan
The concept of dwelling, as Bollnow states, is something intimately rooted in human spatiality. Today, virtual and augmented reality invite us to discover new ways of dwelling space, in one case completely immersed in an artificial world and in the other adding new content to our experience. How is this human spatiality reconfigured through these media? How is this image-space actually perceived? Architecture, inside the head-set, as Mitchel said, dematerialises while opening up to infinite creative possibilities. We can inhabit a space that will (or will never) be built, sharing not only its design vision, but also its spatial and perceptual experience. Through our smartphones, we can contaminate the urban scenario with images, further complicating the mediascape and, perhaps, creating new poietic forms. In both cases, virtual space emerges as a presentified vision of an imaginary, capable of suggesting new meanings to real space.
Fabrizia Bandi, graduated at University of Milano, is a PhD in Philosophical Sciences – Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts (University of Palermo 2016). Her main research topics are phenomenology and aesthetics, with particular regard to the phenomenology of aesthetic experience, aesthetics of architecture and art. She has been postdoctoral fellow at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Università della Svizzera Italiana) thanks to an Excellence fellowship of the FNS (Swiss National Science Foundation) dedicated to the concept of Freespace. She has been adjunct professor of the Aesthetics course at Politecnico of Milan, MSc programme Architectural Design and History (2016-2020). She is a member of the editorial staff of the journal Studi di Estetica as well as of the SIE (Italian Society of Aesthetics). In 2018 she has published the book La percezione armata. Esperienza estetica e immaginazione in Mikel Dufrenne (Mimesis).
Erik Champion
University of South Australia
Reworking Architecture as Art in the Age of Virtual Replication
Given nearly three decades of online 3D formats since VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) designed to create virtual models, virtual spaces, and virtual worlds, to the hype of the “Metaverse” in 2022, we might be surprised the Metaverse is no clearer and not very much closer to the 31-year-old vision of the book Snowcrash. This paper will attempt to address key recent philosophers' and media critics’ core challenges for how we can assess the cultural value of built space in a virtual realm. The challengers include a take and retake on Second Life by the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, modernist architecture as sculpture by Antony Saville, the promise of convergence culture by Henry Jenkins (and his view of computer games as narrative architecture) and finally the question as to whether virtual architecture as art is functionalist, proceduralist, or something else (through extracting the aesthetic writings of Stephen Davies). My focus will be on virtual representations, or better, virtual replications, of the past. I will attempt to link the concepts of cultural presence, hermeneutic environments, and immersive literacy.
Erik Champion is an Enterprise Fellow at the University of South Australia (Creative-Architecture); ANU Honorary Research Professor; UWA Honorary Research Fellow; adjunct Professor, Universitas Bunda Mulia, Jakarta and Curtin University Emeritus Professor. He was previously UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation at Curtin University. His recent books are Playing With The Past: Into The Future (Springer 2023), Rethinking Virtual Places (Indiana University Press, 2021), Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage for Routledge’s Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities Series, and Playing with the Past (Springer, 2011). He also wrote Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture (Routledge, 2019). He edited Virtual Heritage: A Guide (Ubiquity, 2021), The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places (Routledge, 2018), Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism (ETC Press, 2012) and co-edited Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes (2022), and Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities (Routledge, 2017).
University of South Australia
Given nearly three decades of online 3D formats since VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) designed to create virtual models, virtual spaces, and virtual worlds, to the hype of the “Metaverse” in 2022, we might be surprised the Metaverse is no clearer and not very much closer to the 31-year-old vision of the book Snowcrash. This paper will attempt to address key recent philosophers' and media critics’ core challenges for how we can assess the cultural value of built space in a virtual realm. The challengers include a take and retake on Second Life by the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, modernist architecture as sculpture by Antony Saville, the promise of convergence culture by Henry Jenkins (and his view of computer games as narrative architecture) and finally the question as to whether virtual architecture as art is functionalist, proceduralist, or something else (through extracting the aesthetic writings of Stephen Davies). My focus will be on virtual representations, or better, virtual replications, of the past. I will attempt to link the concepts of cultural presence, hermeneutic environments, and immersive literacy.
Erik Champion is an Enterprise Fellow at the University of South Australia (Creative-Architecture); ANU Honorary Research Professor; UWA Honorary Research Fellow; adjunct Professor, Universitas Bunda Mulia, Jakarta and Curtin University Emeritus Professor. He was previously UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and Visualisation at Curtin University. His recent books are Playing With The Past: Into The Future (Springer 2023), Rethinking Virtual Places (Indiana University Press, 2021), Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage for Routledge’s Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities Series, and Playing with the Past (Springer, 2011). He also wrote Organic Design in Twentieth-Century Nordic Architecture (Routledge, 2019). He edited Virtual Heritage: A Guide (Ubiquity, 2021), The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places (Routledge, 2018), Game Mods: Design, Theory and Criticism (ETC Press, 2012) and co-edited Screen Tourism and Affective Landscapes (2022), and Cultural Heritage Infrastructures in Digital Humanities (Routledge, 2017).
Fabrizio Banfi
Politecnico of Milan
Virtual Heritage: The Evolution of Interactivity, Immersion and Interoperability in HBIM and extended reality
The advent of BIM technology has transformed our perception of buildings, now regarded as digital entities encompassing all their components and related information. This paradigm shift from 2D CAD drawings to 3D models has facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration and enabled the storage, documentation, and sharing of heterogeneous content. Moreover, BIM techniques have been extended to built heritage, which has opened up new avenues for communication and sharing through heritage building information modelling (HBIM) models. Nonetheless, the challenge at present is to explore novel levels of interactivity and immersion in digital worlds to enhance the knowledge and sharing of built heritage values. In this context, using real case studies illustrates the advantages and drawbacks of this ongoing evolution, underscoring the need to project HBIM technology towards a more virtual future. Doing so can unlock new possibilities for preserving and sharing our built heritage for future generations, thereby enriching our cultural and historical legacy.
Fabrizio Banfi, a researcher at the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment at Politecnico di Milano, has been actively engaged in research activities related to Building Information Modeling (BIM), 3D survey, Scan-to-BIM, Extended Reality (XR), and virtual museums since 2013. In 2016, his research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through the New Paradigm/New Tools for Architectural Heritage training program at the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) Lab – Carleton University research centers in Ottawa and Autodesk Research Toronto, Ontario (Canada). After a year of international experience, he completed his multidisciplinary doctorate with honors and won the SIFET Award 2018 as the best thesis at the national level. He has authored over 70 articles in national and international scientific journals and conference proceedings. Currently, he is a professor at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Construction Engineering (AUIC), the Specialization School in Architectural Heritage and Landscaping (SBAPP), and the Doctoral School of the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment (ABAC) at Politecnico di Milano. He also collaborates as a teacher at the Raymond Lemaire International Center for Conservation (RLICC) of the KU Leuven within the Archdoc Workshop (Architectural Heritage Documentation for Conservation & Virtual Palace Workshop). He is currently conducting research activities at the Gicarus ABCLab laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, collaborating with several public institutions and national and foreign research centers in the field of digitalization of built heritage, and is an ordinary member of the Italian Design Union (UID).
Politecnico of Milan
The advent of BIM technology has transformed our perception of buildings, now regarded as digital entities encompassing all their components and related information. This paradigm shift from 2D CAD drawings to 3D models has facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration and enabled the storage, documentation, and sharing of heterogeneous content. Moreover, BIM techniques have been extended to built heritage, which has opened up new avenues for communication and sharing through heritage building information modelling (HBIM) models. Nonetheless, the challenge at present is to explore novel levels of interactivity and immersion in digital worlds to enhance the knowledge and sharing of built heritage values. In this context, using real case studies illustrates the advantages and drawbacks of this ongoing evolution, underscoring the need to project HBIM technology towards a more virtual future. Doing so can unlock new possibilities for preserving and sharing our built heritage for future generations, thereby enriching our cultural and historical legacy.
Fabrizio Banfi, a researcher at the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment at Politecnico di Milano, has been actively engaged in research activities related to Building Information Modeling (BIM), 3D survey, Scan-to-BIM, Extended Reality (XR), and virtual museums since 2013. In 2016, his research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through the New Paradigm/New Tools for Architectural Heritage training program at the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) Lab – Carleton University research centers in Ottawa and Autodesk Research Toronto, Ontario (Canada). After a year of international experience, he completed his multidisciplinary doctorate with honors and won the SIFET Award 2018 as the best thesis at the national level. He has authored over 70 articles in national and international scientific journals and conference proceedings. Currently, he is a professor at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Construction Engineering (AUIC), the Specialization School in Architectural Heritage and Landscaping (SBAPP), and the Doctoral School of the Department of Architecture, Construction Engineering and Built Environment (ABAC) at Politecnico di Milano. He also collaborates as a teacher at the Raymond Lemaire International Center for Conservation (RLICC) of the KU Leuven within the Archdoc Workshop (Architectural Heritage Documentation for Conservation & Virtual Palace Workshop). He is currently conducting research activities at the Gicarus ABCLab laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, collaborating with several public institutions and national and foreign research centers in the field of digitalization of built heritage, and is an ordinary member of the Italian Design Union (UID).
Arnaud Desjardins and Thibault Jorge
Femme Fatale Studio
Dream Builders VR Experience
Imagine a bronze elephant erected at the place of the Arc de Triomphe, a gigantic sphere in memory of a scientist, a transparent city suspended above Paris… "Dream Builders" is a documentary and poetic journey into the heart of Paper architectures, those monuments that were never built and remained as drawings. This experience in Virtual Reality is not a lecture on architecture but rather a sensitive dive into the mind of an artist and the utopic ideal that inspires him. The first episode of the collection explores the Cenotaph of Isaac Newton, a utopian monument imagined in 1784 as a grandiose and gigantic tribute to the famous scientist and to the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Arnaud Desjardins, Director
Graduated from Gobelins school Arnaud is an art director and director living in Paris. After years working for digital agencies Arnaud co-founded Femme Fatale Studio in 2016 in order to give birth to more meaningful projects.This independent creative studio has specialized over the years in conceiving and producing immersive and interactive installation for French and international cultural institutions such as the French Ministry of Culture, Louvre Museum, Le Grand Palais, the Nasjonalmuseet in Norway, la Cité de l'Architecture, the National Museum of Natural History... In parallel Arnaud writes, develops and produces his own narrative projects. The pilot of his series Dream Builders has been released last year and the rest of the collection is currently in production.
Thibault Jorge, Producer
Thibault's passion for visual arts and new forms of storytelling has become his profession. After three years studying Visual arts and Hypermedia, he completed his training with a more theoretical approach to the creative and cultural industries. At the crossroads between graphic design, technology and communication, he collaborates on large-scale projects for players in the culture, luxury and technology sectors such as France Télévisions, the LVMH group and the Louvre Museum. A jack-of-all-trades, he also works as a freelance interface designer and architectural photographer. He joined the Femme Fatale Studio in 2016 as Production Director to develop and coordinate the teams in charge of the studio's visual, interactive and immersive experience projects, in France and internationally.
Femme Fatale Studio
Imagine a bronze elephant erected at the place of the Arc de Triomphe, a gigantic sphere in memory of a scientist, a transparent city suspended above Paris… "Dream Builders" is a documentary and poetic journey into the heart of Paper architectures, those monuments that were never built and remained as drawings. This experience in Virtual Reality is not a lecture on architecture but rather a sensitive dive into the mind of an artist and the utopic ideal that inspires him. The first episode of the collection explores the Cenotaph of Isaac Newton, a utopian monument imagined in 1784 as a grandiose and gigantic tribute to the famous scientist and to the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Arnaud Desjardins, Director
Graduated from Gobelins school Arnaud is an art director and director living in Paris. After years working for digital agencies Arnaud co-founded Femme Fatale Studio in 2016 in order to give birth to more meaningful projects.This independent creative studio has specialized over the years in conceiving and producing immersive and interactive installation for French and international cultural institutions such as the French Ministry of Culture, Louvre Museum, Le Grand Palais, the Nasjonalmuseet in Norway, la Cité de l'Architecture, the National Museum of Natural History... In parallel Arnaud writes, develops and produces his own narrative projects. The pilot of his series Dream Builders has been released last year and the rest of the collection is currently in production.
Thibault Jorge, Producer
Thibault's passion for visual arts and new forms of storytelling has become his profession. After three years studying Visual arts and Hypermedia, he completed his training with a more theoretical approach to the creative and cultural industries. At the crossroads between graphic design, technology and communication, he collaborates on large-scale projects for players in the culture, luxury and technology sectors such as France Télévisions, the LVMH group and the Louvre Museum. A jack-of-all-trades, he also works as a freelance interface designer and architectural photographer. He joined the Femme Fatale Studio in 2016 as Production Director to develop and coordinate the teams in charge of the studio's visual, interactive and immersive experience projects, in France and internationally.
Scott McQuire
University of Melbourne
‘Use the /imagine Command’ [1]: urban encounters in mediated cities
Writing in 1967, on the cusp of the era of widespread digital computation, Marshall McLuhan famously declared that all dominant media constitute an environment. How should we understand this environmentality in a present in which networked digital media are not only spatialised throughout cities in historically distinctive ways, but computational processes also offer novel capacities for the production of urban space? Drawing on current practices as well a longer history of mediated urban space, I will explore the continuities and ruptures that shape the present moment. Change in the technologies of mediation not only alter how cities look, but recalibrate processes of perception, inhabitation and social encounter. What is happening to the urban imaginary in 21st century as our cities are routinely ‘augmented’ by digital media, and machine-learning systems assume a growing role in shaping the mediation of urban life?
[1] Prompt for the Midjourney Bot (text to image generating software)
Scott McQuire is Professor of Media and Communication in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is one of the founders of the Research Unit for Public Cultures which fosters interdisciplinary research at the nexus of digital media, contemporary art, urbanism, and social theory. Scott is the author or editor of nine books including The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (2008, the Urban Screens Reader (2009), Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space (2016), Art Seen Under Digital Light: Photography, The Image, and the Aesthetics of Data (2018), and Communicative Cities and Urban Space (2021). The Media City won the Jane Jacobs Publication Award offered by the Urban Communication Foundation in 2009 and has been translated into Chinese (2011, 2014) and Russian (2014) while Geomedia has also been translated into both Russian (2018) and Chinese (2019).
University of Melbourne
Writing in 1967, on the cusp of the era of widespread digital computation, Marshall McLuhan famously declared that all dominant media constitute an environment. How should we understand this environmentality in a present in which networked digital media are not only spatialised throughout cities in historically distinctive ways, but computational processes also offer novel capacities for the production of urban space? Drawing on current practices as well a longer history of mediated urban space, I will explore the continuities and ruptures that shape the present moment. Change in the technologies of mediation not only alter how cities look, but recalibrate processes of perception, inhabitation and social encounter. What is happening to the urban imaginary in 21st century as our cities are routinely ‘augmented’ by digital media, and machine-learning systems assume a growing role in shaping the mediation of urban life?
[1] Prompt for the Midjourney Bot (text to image generating software)
Scott McQuire is Professor of Media and Communication in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is one of the founders of the Research Unit for Public Cultures which fosters interdisciplinary research at the nexus of digital media, contemporary art, urbanism, and social theory. Scott is the author or editor of nine books including The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (2008, the Urban Screens Reader (2009), Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space (2016), Art Seen Under Digital Light: Photography, The Image, and the Aesthetics of Data (2018), and Communicative Cities and Urban Space (2021). The Media City won the Jane Jacobs Publication Award offered by the Urban Communication Foundation in 2009 and has been translated into Chinese (2011, 2014) and Russian (2014) while Geomedia has also been translated into both Russian (2018) and Chinese (2019).
Marcos Novak
University of California, Santa Barbara
Everting Immersion, Convolving Desire: Latent Architectures in Liquid Spaces
We are once again at the steep end of exponential change, where everything changes more rapidly than we might have expected, even when we thought we were already anticipating exponential change. Categories that finally seemed well-understood are once again destabilizing as we enter ever faster turbulence. New formations emerge daily, with more sure to come. Domains that seemed reasonably distinct and well-behaved can no longer pretend to be unaffected. All this is consonant with 21st century epistemology, in which reality consists of multiple interacting fields in which “particles” are simply more intense perturbations of always present waves. At all scales, we are immersed in multiple overlapping oceans of such fields and forces. Technologies such as XR (fusing AR, VR, and multiple perceptual modalities), AI/ML (using large-language models to fuse fact and fiction), and emerging quantum computing (with QCNN, quantum convolutional neural nets, already being explored), provide tangible means to engage and critically investigate new conditions of being. Prominent among them is augmented desire, which, immersed in the an-iconic, develops hungers, appetites, and expectations that evert onto ordinary reality. This “convolution of desire” offers a key for how to understand our present predicament. Inevitably, what we experience shapes what we desire: when we move into virtuality (immersion), we bring expectations from our familiar world into the virtual — but, when we return from virtuality (eversion), we bring with us expectations to impose upon actuality. Ultimately, desire itself is altered. When all conditions reach turbulence, desire itself is convolved into countless new forms, each offering its own “adjacent possible” to evolve into, and through.
Marcos Novak is a transarchitect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to design actual, virtual, and hybrid intelligent environments. Having embraced the digital in architecture as early as the late seventies, Marcos Novak is widely recognized as a pioneer of the study of virtual and extended environments as autonomous architectural spaces, and of algorithmic, generative, and now AI and machine learning approaches to architectural design and art. He is Vice Chair and Professor of Media Arts and Technology at UCSB, and is the founding Director of the transLAB, a transmodal “worldmaking” lab exploring <transformation that leads to speciation, in fact, in fiction, in action>, affiliated with the UCSB AlloSphere research facility and CNSI (California NanoSystems Institute).
His many writings combine architecture, music, art, computation, science, and/or technology, and include such seminal papers as: “Computational Composition in Architecture” (1988), “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace” (1991), “Transmitting Architecture: The transPhysical City” (1996), “Transmitting Architecture Revisited: On the Occasion of the UIA World Congress, 2008”, and “AlloPolis: A Transvergent Manifesto” (2010), among others. In 2008, "Transmitting Architecture", the title of his seminal 1995 essay, became the theme of the “XXIII World Congress of the UIA (Union Internationale Des Architectes”, the largest architectural organization in the world. The growing impact of his work is recognized in works such as “Architecture Unbound: A Century of the Disruptive Avant-Garde" (2021) and “The Encyclopedia of New Media Arts” (2022).
University of California, Santa Barbara
We are once again at the steep end of exponential change, where everything changes more rapidly than we might have expected, even when we thought we were already anticipating exponential change. Categories that finally seemed well-understood are once again destabilizing as we enter ever faster turbulence. New formations emerge daily, with more sure to come. Domains that seemed reasonably distinct and well-behaved can no longer pretend to be unaffected. All this is consonant with 21st century epistemology, in which reality consists of multiple interacting fields in which “particles” are simply more intense perturbations of always present waves. At all scales, we are immersed in multiple overlapping oceans of such fields and forces. Technologies such as XR (fusing AR, VR, and multiple perceptual modalities), AI/ML (using large-language models to fuse fact and fiction), and emerging quantum computing (with QCNN, quantum convolutional neural nets, already being explored), provide tangible means to engage and critically investigate new conditions of being. Prominent among them is augmented desire, which, immersed in the an-iconic, develops hungers, appetites, and expectations that evert onto ordinary reality. This “convolution of desire” offers a key for how to understand our present predicament. Inevitably, what we experience shapes what we desire: when we move into virtuality (immersion), we bring expectations from our familiar world into the virtual — but, when we return from virtuality (eversion), we bring with us expectations to impose upon actuality. Ultimately, desire itself is altered. When all conditions reach turbulence, desire itself is convolved into countless new forms, each offering its own “adjacent possible” to evolve into, and through.
Marcos Novak is a transarchitect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to design actual, virtual, and hybrid intelligent environments. Having embraced the digital in architecture as early as the late seventies, Marcos Novak is widely recognized as a pioneer of the study of virtual and extended environments as autonomous architectural spaces, and of algorithmic, generative, and now AI and machine learning approaches to architectural design and art. He is Vice Chair and Professor of Media Arts and Technology at UCSB, and is the founding Director of the transLAB, a transmodal “worldmaking” lab exploring <transformation that leads to speciation, in fact, in fiction, in action>, affiliated with the UCSB AlloSphere research facility and CNSI (California NanoSystems Institute).
His many writings combine architecture, music, art, computation, science, and/or technology, and include such seminal papers as: “Computational Composition in Architecture” (1988), “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace” (1991), “Transmitting Architecture: The transPhysical City” (1996), “Transmitting Architecture Revisited: On the Occasion of the UIA World Congress, 2008”, and “AlloPolis: A Transvergent Manifesto” (2010), among others. In 2008, "Transmitting Architecture", the title of his seminal 1995 essay, became the theme of the “XXIII World Congress of the UIA (Union Internationale Des Architectes”, the largest architectural organization in the world. The growing impact of his work is recognized in works such as “Architecture Unbound: A Century of the Disruptive Avant-Garde" (2021) and “The Encyclopedia of New Media Arts” (2022).
Matteo Vegetti and Pietro Vitali
University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
Phenomenology of Space and Virtual Reality. An Experimental Course for Students in Interior Architecture
The presentation will focus on the theoretical assumptions and the way of conducting an experimental course on the Phenomenology of Space designed for architects and interior designers. The course made use of virtual reality to allow students to directly experience the perceptive and cognitive effects induced by the forms of space, colour, the texture of materials, and light. Virtual reality was also the medium that made it possible to translate certain philosophical concepts related to the phenomenology of space into an experiential and applicative field close to the sensitivity and spatial culture of the designers. The themes addressed gave rise to a progressive development that allowed students to develop an increasingly complex project and experiment with increasingly complex issues. The course began with the phenomenology of thresholds, and continued with the analysis of field and synesthesia, the phenomenology of atmospheres, and the analysis of orientation and mind maps. In each of these areas of research and experimentation, the common thread remained the relationship between the body and space.
Pietro Vitali
Pietro Vitali, Architect EPFL. Research professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). Head of the degree course in Interior Architecture and international coordinator of the International Master in Interior and Architectural Design (IMIAD). His main areas of teaching and research are museography, architectural composition, school architecture and office architecture. He combines his academic activities with his work as a designer.
Matteo Vegetti
Matteo Vegetti, philosopher, is professor of "Theories of Space" at the University of applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (DACD, Mendrisio), lecturer at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (USI) and at the Master in Geopolitics at La Sapienza University in Rome. He has previously taught at various universities, such as the Politecnico di Milano (for almost ten years), the University of Bergamo, and the University of Milan. His research ranges from aesthetics to political theory. He is the author of many articles and essays, including La fine della storia (Milano 2000), Lessico socio-filosofico della citta (Varese 2002); Hegel e i confini dell’Occidente (Napoli 2004), Filosofie della metropoli (a cura di, Roma, 2009), L’invenzione del globo (Torino, 2017), The Global Spatial Revolution (2022).
University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
The presentation will focus on the theoretical assumptions and the way of conducting an experimental course on the Phenomenology of Space designed for architects and interior designers. The course made use of virtual reality to allow students to directly experience the perceptive and cognitive effects induced by the forms of space, colour, the texture of materials, and light. Virtual reality was also the medium that made it possible to translate certain philosophical concepts related to the phenomenology of space into an experiential and applicative field close to the sensitivity and spatial culture of the designers. The themes addressed gave rise to a progressive development that allowed students to develop an increasingly complex project and experiment with increasingly complex issues. The course began with the phenomenology of thresholds, and continued with the analysis of field and synesthesia, the phenomenology of atmospheres, and the analysis of orientation and mind maps. In each of these areas of research and experimentation, the common thread remained the relationship between the body and space.
Pietro Vitali
Pietro Vitali, Architect EPFL. Research professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). Head of the degree course in Interior Architecture and international coordinator of the International Master in Interior and Architectural Design (IMIAD). His main areas of teaching and research are museography, architectural composition, school architecture and office architecture. He combines his academic activities with his work as a designer.
Matteo Vegetti
Matteo Vegetti, philosopher, is professor of "Theories of Space" at the University of applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (DACD, Mendrisio), lecturer at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (USI) and at the Master in Geopolitics at La Sapienza University in Rome. He has previously taught at various universities, such as the Politecnico di Milano (for almost ten years), the University of Bergamo, and the University of Milan. His research ranges from aesthetics to political theory. He is the author of many articles and essays, including La fine della storia (Milano 2000), Lessico socio-filosofico della citta (Varese 2002); Hegel e i confini dell’Occidente (Napoli 2004), Filosofie della metropoli (a cura di, Roma, 2009), L’invenzione del globo (Torino, 2017), The Global Spatial Revolution (2022).
Massimiliamo Savorra and Silvia La Placa
University of Pavia
Digital tools in Architectural History and Identity of Virtual Space. Some research and teaching experiences for the enhancement of Cultural heritage
How digital tools can relate to the history of architecture, and what identities virtual spaces can have with respect to the monuments of the past? Of course, there are many ways to use the digital tools, but we will try to summarize, through some case studies, the ones that we consider the most effective.
In recent times, digital approaches have been applied in many different fields of the humanities and have led to the creation of a major new cross-sector area which brings together disparate expertise and necessitates interdisciplinary cooperation. The digital approach is a common denominator in specialized research and teaching as well as in archival practices, dissemination and publishing. So, our lecture is about the underlying question: how are the digital humanities and architectural history contributing to cultural heritage research? What are the objects, concepts and methodologies of the research applied in digital humanities and in the cultural heritage studies?
Our contribution aims to outline a panorama of current research issues, challenges, and practices at the frontier between digital humanities and digital cultural heritage, and at the same time intends to present some case studies addressed in the Dada and Play research laboratories at the University of Pavia.
Massimiliano Savorra
Massimiliano Savorra is a professor in History of Architecture at University of Pavia. He received a PhD in History of Architecture from Iuav University of Venice (1999), and a degree in Architecture from University of Naples Federico II (1994). He has participated in numerous conferences and lectured in Italian and foreign universities. He has obtained fellowships and grants in Italy and abroad, has conducted studies in France, Canada and the United States. He has also curated conferences and exhibitions, among them “Pietre ignee cadute dal cielo”. I monumenti della Grande Guerra (Venice 2014). He has published numerous monographic volumes in prestigious editorial series and articles in important specialized magazines.
Silvia La Placa
A research fellow at DICAr on the topic of 'Archives and digital models for the study of the territory and historical landscape', she obtained her PhD in April 2023, in Design Modeling and Simulation in Engineering at the University of Pavia. Since 2019 she has been collaborating with the DAda-LAB laboratory in national and international research. As an Early Stage Researcher she participates in European Projects on the development of strategies for documentation, digitisation and valorisation of Cultural Heritage.
University of Pavia
How digital tools can relate to the history of architecture, and what identities virtual spaces can have with respect to the monuments of the past? Of course, there are many ways to use the digital tools, but we will try to summarize, through some case studies, the ones that we consider the most effective.
In recent times, digital approaches have been applied in many different fields of the humanities and have led to the creation of a major new cross-sector area which brings together disparate expertise and necessitates interdisciplinary cooperation. The digital approach is a common denominator in specialized research and teaching as well as in archival practices, dissemination and publishing. So, our lecture is about the underlying question: how are the digital humanities and architectural history contributing to cultural heritage research? What are the objects, concepts and methodologies of the research applied in digital humanities and in the cultural heritage studies?
Our contribution aims to outline a panorama of current research issues, challenges, and practices at the frontier between digital humanities and digital cultural heritage, and at the same time intends to present some case studies addressed in the Dada and Play research laboratories at the University of Pavia.
Massimiliano Savorra
Massimiliano Savorra is a professor in History of Architecture at University of Pavia. He received a PhD in History of Architecture from Iuav University of Venice (1999), and a degree in Architecture from University of Naples Federico II (1994). He has participated in numerous conferences and lectured in Italian and foreign universities. He has obtained fellowships and grants in Italy and abroad, has conducted studies in France, Canada and the United States. He has also curated conferences and exhibitions, among them “Pietre ignee cadute dal cielo”. I monumenti della Grande Guerra (Venice 2014). He has published numerous monographic volumes in prestigious editorial series and articles in important specialized magazines.
Silvia La Placa
A research fellow at DICAr on the topic of 'Archives and digital models for the study of the territory and historical landscape', she obtained her PhD in April 2023, in Design Modeling and Simulation in Engineering at the University of Pavia. Since 2019 she has been collaborating with the DAda-LAB laboratory in national and international research. As an Early Stage Researcher she participates in European Projects on the development of strategies for documentation, digitisation and valorisation of Cultural Heritage.
Ugo La Pietra
Real Space Virtual Space
By the end of the 1960s I had already designed and realised a series of interactive audiovisual environments: Le immersioni, structures where the individual lost the perception of the reassuring parameters that characterised life within the organised society of the time. "Models of understanding", as I called them, environments and tools defined as "unbalancing" (Casco sonoro, Immersione nel vento e nell'acqua, ...), designed to break the certainties imposed by the repressive society of the time. They were also intended to release energies for new environmental proposals. The overcoming of repressive conditions within society led me to design a "self-managed communication system" (between individual and individual, between private and public space, up to urban communication), which was presented in 1972 as Cellula abitativa: una microstruttura all’interno dei sistemi di comunicazione at the MoMA in New York, in the exhibition Italy: the New Domestic Landscape. The topic "between real and virtual space" was present in many other works, from the film La grande occasione (Triennale, 1973) to the exhibition Spazio reale Spazio virtuale (Triennale, 1979), together with a film of the same title, to the exhibition Cronografie. Il tempo e la memoria (Venice Biennale, 1980), La casa telematica (Fiera di Milano, 1983), Casa naturale casa virtuale (Triennale, 1992), Dai giornali ai portali (Comune di Miano, 2000). These experimental exhibitions well represent the problems, contaminations and first anticipations of the transformation of our society, which is still struggling to reconcile the opposing conditions of the real and the virtual.
Ugo La Pietra lives and works in Milan. He has always described himself as a “researcher” of visual arts and communication. He has presented his research through many exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the FRAC Museum in Orléans, the Ceramics Museum in Faenza, and the Ragghianti Foundation in Lucca. He was awarded the Compasso d’Oro for The Research in 1979 and Compasso d’Oro for his Carrer in 2016. His research experience in art, architecture and design led him to develop such themes as “La casa telematica” (MoMA, New York, 1972 - Fiera di Milano, 1983), “Rapporto tra Spazio reale e Spazio virtuale” (Triennale di Milano, 1979, 1992), “Cultura Balneare” (Cattolica Cultural Centre, 1985, 1995). Through his works, research, writing and teaching, he has always supported design that is full of meaning, for design that is “territorial” rather than internationalist.
By the end of the 1960s I had already designed and realised a series of interactive audiovisual environments: Le immersioni, structures where the individual lost the perception of the reassuring parameters that characterised life within the organised society of the time. "Models of understanding", as I called them, environments and tools defined as "unbalancing" (Casco sonoro, Immersione nel vento e nell'acqua, ...), designed to break the certainties imposed by the repressive society of the time. They were also intended to release energies for new environmental proposals. The overcoming of repressive conditions within society led me to design a "self-managed communication system" (between individual and individual, between private and public space, up to urban communication), which was presented in 1972 as Cellula abitativa: una microstruttura all’interno dei sistemi di comunicazione at the MoMA in New York, in the exhibition Italy: the New Domestic Landscape. The topic "between real and virtual space" was present in many other works, from the film La grande occasione (Triennale, 1973) to the exhibition Spazio reale Spazio virtuale (Triennale, 1979), together with a film of the same title, to the exhibition Cronografie. Il tempo e la memoria (Venice Biennale, 1980), La casa telematica (Fiera di Milano, 1983), Casa naturale casa virtuale (Triennale, 1992), Dai giornali ai portali (Comune di Miano, 2000). These experimental exhibitions well represent the problems, contaminations and first anticipations of the transformation of our society, which is still struggling to reconcile the opposing conditions of the real and the virtual.
Ugo La Pietra lives and works in Milan. He has always described himself as a “researcher” of visual arts and communication. He has presented his research through many exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. He has curated a number of exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano, the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the FRAC Museum in Orléans, the Ceramics Museum in Faenza, and the Ragghianti Foundation in Lucca. He was awarded the Compasso d’Oro for The Research in 1979 and Compasso d’Oro for his Carrer in 2016. His research experience in art, architecture and design led him to develop such themes as “La casa telematica” (MoMA, New York, 1972 - Fiera di Milano, 1983), “Rapporto tra Spazio reale e Spazio virtuale” (Triennale di Milano, 1979, 1992), “Cultura Balneare” (Cattolica Cultural Centre, 1985, 1995). Through his works, research, writing and teaching, he has always supported design that is full of meaning, for design that is “territorial” rather than internationalist.
Elisângela Brito Pessoa Vilar
Lisbon School of Architecture, Lisbon University
Looking for a Human-Centred Architecture – the role of Virtual Reality as an interaction environment
Research in Architecture is increasingly integrating new technologies and methodologies to understand the interactions between Humans and environments. In parallel, Architecture has also incorporated concepts from areas such as ergonomics, environmental psychology, and information technology, moving closer to the User Experience and usability concepts and fostering the emergence of new approaches to planning the use of the space. In this context, it is interesting to look at the environment as a place for interaction frameworks that are planned and designed considering the users’ needs and motivations. Thus, modelling some aspects of this interaction, namely the experience users have while using these environments has emerged as an important factor in architectural research. The advances and new demands related to Virtual Reality (VR) made this technology one of the focus of innovative initiatives for the architecture scientific area, with many studies focusing on both, the technology itself and all interaction problems that could arise from this, and its use as new interaction environment, where it is possible to simulate a paramount of alternatives that could be impossible to materialize in the physical world. This presentation will focus on considering Humans experience as a core factor for architecture, adopting a human-centric perspective while presenting experimental research using VR as an interaction environment to investigate the effect of architectural variables on human behaviour. With this, we seek to promote efficient communication between the environment and its user, providing architects with a set of parameters that could be helpful for modelling this communication.
Elisângela Brito Pessoa Vilar is a full researcher at Lisbon School of Architecture of Lisbon University (Portugal), a PhD in Human Factors and Ergonomics (ULisboa, 2012), under the theme related to the use of virtual reality to study the influence of environmental variables on the Human wayfinding within complex buildings. She participated as a researcher and advisor on several European I&D projects, such as: Using Virtual Reality to Evaluate the Safety Information Effectiveness / Future safety warnings / Virtual Reality in the study of technology-based warning / eExhibitions eten517335 and AAL4ALL – ambient assisted living project. Nowadays she is an effective researcher at CIAUD (Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Architecture, Urbanism and Design) in the ErgoUX research group. She is also a collaborator researcher at ITI/LarSyS (Institute of Interactive Technologies), and a member of the research group in Ergonomics and Usability of Products and Information Systems at the Design Department at the Federal University of Pernambuco – Brazil. Her main research areas of interest are centered on the study of Human interactions with complex systems and environments using virtual environments, usability, and user experience. She has several papers in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and actively participates in international conferences on the scope of Human Factors at the tracks related to virtual and augmented reality in the built environment. She is also the author of a book titled Virtual and Augmented Reality for Architecture and Design.
Lisbon School of Architecture, Lisbon University
Research in Architecture is increasingly integrating new technologies and methodologies to understand the interactions between Humans and environments. In parallel, Architecture has also incorporated concepts from areas such as ergonomics, environmental psychology, and information technology, moving closer to the User Experience and usability concepts and fostering the emergence of new approaches to planning the use of the space. In this context, it is interesting to look at the environment as a place for interaction frameworks that are planned and designed considering the users’ needs and motivations. Thus, modelling some aspects of this interaction, namely the experience users have while using these environments has emerged as an important factor in architectural research. The advances and new demands related to Virtual Reality (VR) made this technology one of the focus of innovative initiatives for the architecture scientific area, with many studies focusing on both, the technology itself and all interaction problems that could arise from this, and its use as new interaction environment, where it is possible to simulate a paramount of alternatives that could be impossible to materialize in the physical world. This presentation will focus on considering Humans experience as a core factor for architecture, adopting a human-centric perspective while presenting experimental research using VR as an interaction environment to investigate the effect of architectural variables on human behaviour. With this, we seek to promote efficient communication between the environment and its user, providing architects with a set of parameters that could be helpful for modelling this communication.
Elisângela Brito Pessoa Vilar is a full researcher at Lisbon School of Architecture of Lisbon University (Portugal), a PhD in Human Factors and Ergonomics (ULisboa, 2012), under the theme related to the use of virtual reality to study the influence of environmental variables on the Human wayfinding within complex buildings. She participated as a researcher and advisor on several European I&D projects, such as: Using Virtual Reality to Evaluate the Safety Information Effectiveness / Future safety warnings / Virtual Reality in the study of technology-based warning / eExhibitions eten517335 and AAL4ALL – ambient assisted living project. Nowadays she is an effective researcher at CIAUD (Interdisciplinary Center for Studies in Architecture, Urbanism and Design) in the ErgoUX research group. She is also a collaborator researcher at ITI/LarSyS (Institute of Interactive Technologies), and a member of the research group in Ergonomics and Usability of Products and Information Systems at the Design Department at the Federal University of Pernambuco – Brazil. Her main research areas of interest are centered on the study of Human interactions with complex systems and environments using virtual environments, usability, and user experience. She has several papers in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and actively participates in international conferences on the scope of Human Factors at the tracks related to virtual and augmented reality in the built environment. She is also the author of a book titled Virtual and Augmented Reality for Architecture and Design.
Jose Pareja Gomez
Associate / VR Developer, Zaha Hadid Architects; AADRL Course Tutor, Architectural Association School of Architecture
Architecture in the digital age
The lecture will showcase the work of the ZHVR Group, immersive technologies research group within ZHA, as well as research carried out in Academia, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture DRL (Design Research Lab) and UCL Bartlett Bpro postgraduate programmes, in the topics of Metaverse and Mixed Reality technologies.
Born in Mexico City. MArch in Architecture and Urbanism by the Architectural Association in London UK. He has been a lecturer on diverse technology and architectural forums in Latin America and Europe. He is an Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects where he has worked on a series of Urban and Architectural projects specialising in the use of computation within the design development process. In addition, he is a lead VR Developer for the ZHVR Group, AR/VR research and development group within ZHA. He’s previously been a Course Tutor Bartlett UCL BPro's Research Cluster 9, unit focused on extended realities and augmentation in architectural design and fabrication and is currently a course tutor at the Architectural Association DRL master’s programme.
Associate / VR Developer, Zaha Hadid Architects; AADRL Course Tutor, Architectural Association School of Architecture
The lecture will showcase the work of the ZHVR Group, immersive technologies research group within ZHA, as well as research carried out in Academia, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture DRL (Design Research Lab) and UCL Bartlett Bpro postgraduate programmes, in the topics of Metaverse and Mixed Reality technologies.
Born in Mexico City. MArch in Architecture and Urbanism by the Architectural Association in London UK. He has been a lecturer on diverse technology and architectural forums in Latin America and Europe. He is an Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects where he has worked on a series of Urban and Architectural projects specialising in the use of computation within the design development process. In addition, he is a lead VR Developer for the ZHVR Group, AR/VR research and development group within ZHA. He’s previously been a Course Tutor Bartlett UCL BPro's Research Cluster 9, unit focused on extended realities and augmentation in architectural design and fabrication and is currently a course tutor at the Architectural Association DRL master’s programme.
Valentina Temporin, John Volpato
Ultra Studio
Osaka ’70 VR Experience
In 1970, architect Maurizio Sacripanti participated in the competition for the Italian pavilion at the Osaka Expo with an iconic and visionary project characterized by structures in continuous movement. The project ranked second and was never built. Today, more than 50 years after that vision, the pavilion lives again in virtual reality with the Osaka'70 experience, created by the research project T.E.A.M. (Team Enhanced Architectural Modelling) coordinated by Valentina Temporin and John Volpato. Osaka'70 is an example of how by translating historical archives and collections through digital and virtual tools and languages, we can interpret works of art and architecture projects that have never been realized. A rebirth that allows them to be known by the general public and thus be included in the dialogue of the present.
Valentina Temporin
Valentina Temporin studied architecture at the Iuav University in Venice, where she coordinated the Master in processi costruttivi sostenibili from 2010 to 2014. Working between Rome and Beijing, in 2015 she established Poplab, a multi-award-winning digital manufacturing startup that focuses on 3D printing for the production of everything from objects to façade components. From 2019 to 2022, alongside John Volpato, she managed the research project T.E.A.M. (Time Enhanced Architectural Modeling) on architecture and virtual reality. Today, she is a VR consultant for companies and a lecturer for both universities and private institutions. Her research has always been focused upon imagining solutions that optimise the relationship between people, buildings and new technologies, applying a human-centered approach to architecture and design.
John Volpato
John Volpato comes from an artistic background, and he holds a great passion for technology that has led him to explore creativity in many different fields. Passing from product design to art, and from communication to the world of exhibit design, he captures a synthesis that is able to merge human expression with technology. From 2010 to 2015 he worked within his own design studio in Venice, realizing interactive multimedia exhibitions and immersive installations commissioned by entities and institutions that included the Biennale di Venezia, Cipriani, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Querini Stampalia Foundation. From 2019 to 2022, he co-ordinated, alongside Valentina Temporin, the research project T.E.A.M. (Time Enhanced Architectural Modeling) on architecture and virtual reality. Since 2018, he works as a VR consultant for companies and institutions, curating, among other things, the VR settings for the exhibition ‘Supernova’ by Cao Fei at the MAXXI museum in Rome.
Ultra Studio
In 1970, architect Maurizio Sacripanti participated in the competition for the Italian pavilion at the Osaka Expo with an iconic and visionary project characterized by structures in continuous movement. The project ranked second and was never built. Today, more than 50 years after that vision, the pavilion lives again in virtual reality with the Osaka'70 experience, created by the research project T.E.A.M. (Team Enhanced Architectural Modelling) coordinated by Valentina Temporin and John Volpato. Osaka'70 is an example of how by translating historical archives and collections through digital and virtual tools and languages, we can interpret works of art and architecture projects that have never been realized. A rebirth that allows them to be known by the general public and thus be included in the dialogue of the present.
Valentina Temporin
Valentina Temporin studied architecture at the Iuav University in Venice, where she coordinated the Master in processi costruttivi sostenibili from 2010 to 2014. Working between Rome and Beijing, in 2015 she established Poplab, a multi-award-winning digital manufacturing startup that focuses on 3D printing for the production of everything from objects to façade components. From 2019 to 2022, alongside John Volpato, she managed the research project T.E.A.M. (Time Enhanced Architectural Modeling) on architecture and virtual reality. Today, she is a VR consultant for companies and a lecturer for both universities and private institutions. Her research has always been focused upon imagining solutions that optimise the relationship between people, buildings and new technologies, applying a human-centered approach to architecture and design.
John Volpato
John Volpato comes from an artistic background, and he holds a great passion for technology that has led him to explore creativity in many different fields. Passing from product design to art, and from communication to the world of exhibit design, he captures a synthesis that is able to merge human expression with technology. From 2010 to 2015 he worked within his own design studio in Venice, realizing interactive multimedia exhibitions and immersive installations commissioned by entities and institutions that included the Biennale di Venezia, Cipriani, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Querini Stampalia Foundation. From 2019 to 2022, he co-ordinated, alongside Valentina Temporin, the research project T.E.A.M. (Time Enhanced Architectural Modeling) on architecture and virtual reality. Since 2018, he works as a VR consultant for companies and institutions, curating, among other things, the VR settings for the exhibition ‘Supernova’ by Cao Fei at the MAXXI museum in Rome.
research: conference
Real Space-Virtual Space
Aesthetics, Architecture, and Immersive Environments
In 1979 Ugo la Pietra curated a section of the 16th Milan Triennale entitled “Spazio reale-spazio virtuale” [Real Space-Virtual Space]. Through a series of installations, the architect investigated how audio-visual media generated an actual space and how that was related to the "real" space of the city (La Pietra 1979). La Pietra had long been interested in multimedia experimentation: his Immersioni [Immersions] (1967-70) were protovirtual environments composed of images, sounds, and wearable or inhabitable devices (La Pietra 1971). La Pietra's work, well before the spread of the technologies we now call virtual reality, emphasized the spatial, architectural and urban nature of audio-visual forms, opening up theoretical and practical models that redefined the relationship between the virtual and the real.
Inspired by these critical perspectives, the conference aims at investigating how "new" media – with a particular focus on the immersive environments of virtual reality (VR) and the emersive practices of augmented reality (AR) - create an artificial space of their own in dialogue with the design and perception of the architectural and urban space, fostering productive contaminations and intertwining.
Virtual reality headsets create an environment that subverts the traditional status of the image, in a way denying itself. Indeed, the image presents itself as unframed, immediate and immersive, in a word: an an-icon (Pinotti, Cavaletti 2020; Pinotti 2021). The spatial experience created by these devices, as well as the identity and performativity of the users, must be redefined and described anew (Hofer et al. 2018; Champion 2019). Therefore, it is necessary to reframe an aesthetic of the virtual space (Champion 2021a; Tavinor 2021) to investigate this specific experience which always involves the body, but, at the same time, excludes it.
VR and AR represent a new tool for architects and planners to rethink design in unprecedented perspectives (Virilio 1998; Bandi 2021, Parker 2021; Vilar et al. 2022). Those de-vices allow professionals, but also universities and academies, clients and citizens, to quasi-live the project, not only visualising it but inhabiting its space. In short, virtual realities change the way we represent and also our relationship with this representation.
Jaron Lanier, one of the firsts pioneers of virtual reality, has called this technology "a shared dream" (Lanier 2017), emphasising VR’s dreamlike component (Grossi 2021). This characteristic leads to another field of application: virtual space has the potential to become a poietic collector of unrealised projects, a tool for the re-enactment of destroyed buildings or utopian cities that come to life through the environmental image.
Beyond the headset lies the real city. Here, the vector from the virtual to the real changes direction (Milgram, Kishino 1994). Technologies such as augmented and mixed reality (MR) bring digital objects out of the urban fabric, both for practical (Duarte and Álvarez 2021; Sharma 2021) and creative purposes (Kot 2021; Pirandello 2021; Shokrani et al. 2021), redefining, in the wake of Manovich (2006), new poetics of augmented space. This perspective also includes the conservation and enhancement of architectural heritage that exploits these technologies to offer new forms of experience of sites and architecture (Champion 2021 b).
Furthermore, these practices enter into dialogue with the concepts of mediascapes (Appadurai 1996; Casetti 2018) and media city (McQuire 2008) that confirm and articulate the intimate relationship between landscape, urban fabric and media (Verhoeff 2012; 2020; Montani et al. 2018)
In conclusion, the hyphen that separates "real space" from "virtual space" must be understood here not as a hiatus, but as the expression of a continuum: a process of hybridization and fluidification toward a sort of transarchitecture (Novak 1991; n.d.), opening a threshold between reality and virtuality. In this fold, this conference will take place, spanning from theoretical moments to VR and AR experiences.
"Real Space-Virtual Space" is thus aimed at opening critical discussions and proposing research perspectives on topics such as:
- Mediarcheology of virtual architectural representation.
- Designing in VR.
- Phenomenology and Aesthetics of the Virtual Space.
- Participatory design and virtual technologies.
- Unrealised projects and virtual or augmented reality.
- Cyberspaces and imaginary/utopian architecture.
- Virtual reality and architectural heritage.
- VR as a training tool.
- Cities, media and virtual practices.
Please find below the full program.
The conference is open to the public, no fee or registration is required.
19th-20th of June: Sala Napoleonica, University of Milan; 21th of June: Triennale
organized by