Virtual Paradise

Abstract

This thesis focuses on an ever-growing and expanding field of augmented reality and discovering who will have to design these systems. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, industries have focused on online and virtualization of everyday systems. These systems are as simple as online shopping to Facebook’s focus on the “Metaverse”. Virtualization is beginning to make its way into our everyday lives at an increasing rate and as this becomes an augmented system, we will need to design these systems into our buildings. Some of the goals of this research were to discover a world where augmented reality has integrated with society. This has turned into discovering the types of virtual systems that could be integrated into the architecture. In a sense, these systems become part of our building materials. The methodology of this study has been split between classic reading, writing research, and research by making. The experience created for this research is inspired by the topic and open-source software used to create location-based AR. This thesis finds that within the design process, virtualization is already included, and this could be easily intercepted into structures with BIM modeling. It allows for the virtual representation of a project to live on and communicate information about itself to its users. This study overall has worked to lay the groundwork for a future of architecture in which these systems could be implemented. It allows architects to think about the virtual entities we make as more than representation and could allow us to create truly inspiring work that isn’t physical.