The Real Virtual or the Real Real – Entering Mixed Reality

Pia Fricker holds the Professorship for Computational Methodologies for Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the Department of Architecture. One of her research areas is the development of a design methodology for combining visionary application fields of human interaction with large-scale environmental data flow in the realms of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). 

Research by Design > Studio as Research Incubator: 

The incorporation of virtual reality (VR) into the workflow of landscape architects/architects and designers is already standard in many offices all over the world. How can we explore this new workflow in order to re-imagine the given possibilities? What are the challenges, possibilities and opportunities of this technology in order to use it as a creative, design supportive tool? Within the experimental studio the focus lied on entering the next level of VR beyond pure representation of the reality. Intensive studio sessions on theoretical questions, software learning (mainly Revit and Unreal Engine) and storytelling enabled the students to formulate your personal position for integrating VR into your future career. The studio was supplemented through 2 intensive workshops and a lecture series with invited specialists. Within the workshops the focus was on on skill building in the area of VR workflow and storytelling in VR.  

Teaching Team: Pia Fricker, Lauri Lemmenlehti, Mikko Vekkeli

The studio is part of a research project in collaboration with xx, first outcomes have been presented on the Digital Landscape Architecture Conference (DLA) in May 2018 at Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf / University of Applied Sciences in Freising / Munich.

The article is published in the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture / JoDLA 3-2018.

 The work presented by Pia Fricker has been selected for the DLA 2018 award for best contribution to education in digital landscape architecture.