Virtual Reality and the Built Environment

Abstract

Virtual reality is influencing the way that spaces are designed and it is changing our experience of the built environment. For example, in the summer of 2000, the artist Horst Kiechle was using a computer for design. Later that year, the spaces he designed were fabricated and installed in a gallery in Sydney. The exhibition, which was entitled Northwestwind Mild Turbulence, was enjoyed by visitors to the gallery and by many other people who experienced it through a virtual reality (VR) model. This book is for professionals, such as architects, engineers and planners, as well as for students and others interested in buildings and cities. The central question it addresses is how virtual reality can be used in the design, production and management of the built environment. We take a fresh look at applications of virtual reality in the construction sector with the aim of inspiring and informing future use. Virtual reality applications are based on a range of technologies evolved for entertainment, military and advanced manufacturing purposes. As with other emerging technologies, realizing the early dreams for virtual reality has taken longer than was initially predicted (Brooks, 1999). Potential benefits, such as its use by engineering organizations to simulate dynamic operation and coordinate detail design, have not always been anticipated. Our understanding of the relative importance of technologies has changed over time. For example, head-mounted displays are less widely used than predicted in the late 1980s. Yet, whilst these symbols of early virtual reality seem increasingly dated, the interactive, spatial, real-time medium at the heart of VR applications is becoming ubiquitous