Augmented reality and my family

I was at the architecture school on Thursday. I went to see if there was a lecture. There wasn’t. Deciding to spend some time in the library I turned and found the guy I met at the train station. His name is Halvord. We talked for a little while. I told him a little bit about the Valle and Seattle. He was telling me about his dissertation work. Fascinating stuff. He’s looking at augmented reality and its uses for architecture. Augmented reality is the process of using wearable computers to enhance the real world. I don’t know a lot about it, but the computers seem a similar to virtual reality and in fact, virtual reality may be a pat of Augmented Reality. But one creates and entire environment (virtual) while the other is adding to our existing environment (augmented). But I don’t know a lot about it so if this isn’t a complete picture that’s my ignorance. In Halvor’s case, specifically, he was describing an apparatus that could be worn, video glasses for instance, which could feed information about a specific site from a video camera and combined these real life real time images with a 3D model. The way he it explained it being implemented is that you visit an environment, say a future building site. The client wears the video glasses. A digital camera feeds the real world images to the client. As he looks around, turns his head, looks up and down, the video camera captures the images and displays them on the glasses. Then a cpu superimposes the proposed building design in digital 3D form into the environment. The 3D model is also synced to the movement of the wearer. So wherever the client looks, an image of the real environment is shown with the proposed changes, what ever they may be. The implications are amazing. A buddy of mine in school, Coffield King, was writing an article about using 3D gaming engines for architectural models. Creating a virtual world like a massively multiplayer online video game where architectural models could be displayed for people around the world to visit without leaving their offices. They could just log into some server and walk around a building. I found this fascinating as well. Both of these ideas imply a wealth of possibilities for describing architecture to the layman. As an architect I’ve been trained to read plans and sections and elevations and, using these drawings, I can construct an idea of a three dimensional space. But some one not use to looking at these drawings has a hard time seeing what a building will look like, what the relationships are going to be, how the building will actually work. With technologies like Augmented Reality, or 3D gaming engines the ability to demonstrate, to show architecture to non-architects is wide open. I once had a conversation with another friend of mine, Justin Kliewer about the goal of architects. My contention was and is that architects make buildings not drawings. His contention (paraphrasing from a year old conversation over beers) was that architectural representation was as significant as the building. And I think about this idea in light of these new technologies. If architects loose their hand, loose their ability to draw with their hand and rely more and more on 3D modeling as a design tool, how will that effect architecture. If the clients could have walked through a building like Bilbao, or the EMP, seen it in its real world context versus some drawing of it, even a computer generated drawing, would these buildings have been built? Hard to say, but there is an impact here. There is a definite realignment of the way people will perceive architecture in the future based on the way it is represented in the design phase.

It was a good conversation, interesting ideas. I was glad I ran into that guy. I’ve been working on the thesis and it’s coming along. I visited Akershus Fortress yesterday. Took some photos, walked around.






I found some more of this artists work. I really like it. It's cute, sure, but there is also a grit to it, a sense of balance to the compositions the artists produces. I don't know. They are simple and inspired.


I am taking today to try to decide where to travel to next or even if I should travel again. I don’t think the Bergen trip would give me anything, since only one f the museums got back to me and they are both closed for the season. I have quite a bit of information about the middle ages to draw from already. And the Outdoor museum here in Oslo has examples of buildings from all over the country. It would have been nice to see a farmstead in its original context. I wish I’d have found these farms earlier. My fault, really. It’s still on the table though I’ll make a decision by tonight.

In other news I ran across this:

http://goscandinavia.about.com/

It seems that my weblog about coming to Norway and looking at buildings was listed in an article about Scandinavia on About.com. Thanks a lot to Terri Mapes for having that link there. Appreciate it.

And finally today, I’m looking for my brothers. Well, not them actually, but their addresses. If anyone who comes here happens to see them or know them, I could use their address. Please send it to me at this email address. umberhulk888@hotmail.com. Thanks loads. I don’t fully understand how my family cannot have email in this our technology age, but it seems that hardly anyone in my family understands the convenience of the World Wide Web for things like communication and improving the quality of your life. All of them have email addresses, they just don’t have access to them or they ignore them. Or they ignore me. Which is possible, and likely. I imagine them all getting together on some messenger service, chatting it up, telling jokes, swapping recipes and showing pictures of things like new babies and new cars. I see them some time having set up their own servers and running these great websites letting each other know how things are going. They’ve started Internet businesses about keeping in touch with relatives in distant lands. And some how, for some reason, they neglected to let me in on their family network. As if I was the bastard older brother who fed them butter sandwiches and would let them play with the Atari. It was my Atari; they had their go-bots and their care bears. It was my Atari. Serves me right I suppose. Anyway, I’d like to get them some Christmas presents. And I need address for that. Any help would be great. I’d call but I don’t know how. Long story.