Mediating Mediums – The Digital 3d Winner of the Harvard GSD Thesis Prize engages AR and emerging technology
Mediating Mediums: The Digital 3dPresented on May 17, 2011 | Harvard GSD Advisor: Mack Scogin
Greg Tran (gregmtran@gmail.com)
Architecture’s ability to mediate spatial and perceptual experience has historically been tied tothe inherent qualities of material form and function. However, our lives have become coloredby immaterialstimuli as well.
Last semester Matt Storus and I did an exhibit here which explored new digital techniques…. hispart focused on video game engines and mine on new developments in video and mixedreality…. The techniques we were interested in allow designers to engage in a more embodiedunderstanding of the spaces they are designing and offer a link between intuitive experienceand digital worlds.
My thesis is a follow up on that project… Just wanted to start out here very briefly introduce thisaugmented reality model and then move into 111. . Usually this technology is used as a standalone object… A webcam allows the visualization of a 3 dimensional model in real space, butlargely it has been used as a gimmick… in advertising, games etc, but has failed to have to havecontextual relationships with real geometry. This is an incredibly simple model, but keep it inmind as i show the presentation in the next room.
The video I’m about to show is of a technique which is applicable to architecture now. It’s arepresentational technique in this lineage I’ve been describing As the material and digital collapse, new tools for art and architecture are created. The currentincarnation allows for designed and simulated geometries projected into video of physical spacewith realistic light and textures.
In architecture, the digital is largely used as a tool to help organize data, and mock upgeometries and create design drawings, but the format has always been in the abstract.Current computational tools produce a disembodied representation of three dimensional spaceon two dimensional surfaces… These representations and modes of design production lacktangible spatial scalar context, and fail to emphasize processional or experiential qualities from an embedded perspective.
This video technique gives architects the ability to iterate through amore experiential lens.
Full Presentation Script : Link
Submitted by Greg Tran
