by Kim O’Connell

This scenario is becoming increasingly common as more architects incorporate virtual reality (VR) into their practices. Along with its cousins—augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR)—virtual reality allows designers to push the boundaries of visualization, giving colleagues and clients new ways to experience and understand a building or space long before it is actually built. With VR, architects can transmit not just what a building will look like, but also what it will feel like.

“Traditionally in architecture, you have blueprints and scale models, and 3D modeling has been around in force for the last 20 years,” says Jeff Mottle, president and CEO of CGarchitect Digital Media Corp. and publisher of CGarchitect, an online magazine and community for architectural-visualization professionals. “VR plays into these traditional methods because the two fit closely together, more than the manufacturers actually realize.”

Manufacturers still mostly view VR for gaming rather than enterprise solutions – but that is changing, according to Mottle, who just moderated a panel about these emerging technologies at this year’s Autodesk University Las Vegas.
With the dizzying rate of technology advancement and growing options, here are four considerations for firms thinking of entering this brave new virtual world.

1. VR is a rapidly changing industry.

Virtual reality has been around in some form for decades (with the first head-mounted systems debuting in 1968), but the technology has not been elastic or advanced enough to have widespread application until now. With advances in mobile technology, which placed high-resolution imagery into everyone’s hands, VR has experienced an explosion in the past two years.

Widely available head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, and Google Cardboard have brought VR into the mainstream and made it more affordable (although costs generally still run from hundreds to thousands). Facebook’s purchase of Oculus for $2 billion in 2014 also offered the industry a highly visible boost.

“One of the challenges is everything is changing so quickly,” Mottle says. “Not everyone has the time or resources to try every one of these HMDs, so we’re trying to get the dialogue going to discuss the pros and cons.”

According to a survey in CGarchitect, the leading users of VR for architectural visualization are in Europe (40 percent) and the United States (21 percent), with commenters saying that the technology will be revolutionary for the industry. Nearly 70 percent of respondents are using VR/AR/MR in production or planning to do so in 2017, while 77 percent were experimenting with the technology or planning to do so.

2. VR, AR, and MR are similar but have different capabilities.

VR is the immersive, full-headset experience that most people associate with this technology. “With virtual reality, you’re immersing yourself into a virtual environment and closing yourself off completely from the outside world,” Mottle says. “Depending on which device you’re using, you could do room-scale VR and ‘walk’ through the space.” (And with grid guidelines in your virtual world, you won’t accidentally walk into a real wall.)

With augmented reality, data and/or instructional information are animated over the real-world view, often through smaller devices such as a mobile phone or tablet. Pokémon Go is a popular consumer example of an augmented-reality app; a professional use case would be an engineer remotely teaching a mechanic how to repair something.

Then there’s MR: Mixing together aspects of VR and AR, MR takes virtual objects and overlays them onto the real world. Two people (say, an architect and a structural engineer based in another country) can be networked into a virtual world where they can interact together with a virtual building on a real site.

3. Architects can use VR at various stages in the design process.

One benefit of VR is that it can be rendered at different Levels of Detail (LOD), so an architect in the early design phase could have an immersive experience in a non-photorealistic room, just to get a sense of spatial relationships and massing. Or the experience could be hyperreal, so that a VR video could have soft sunlight filtering down through a clerestory window, with the sound of birds chirping outside (for client presentations).

Increasingly, architects are integrating VR hardware such as HTC Vive and Oculus with BIM software. “This will allow architects and clients alike to truly understand the spatial qualities of the project,” says Kim Baumann Larsen, an architect and the VR advisor for The Future Group. “This spatial understanding should make clients more confident in the design and reduce time spent in meetings and the use of lateral design revisions.”

Mobile VR solutions using cardboard headsets and a smartphone are another increasingly popular solution. “The architect can render stereo 360 panoramic images directly from the BIM software such as [Autodesk] Revit or using a visualization tool like 3ds Max with V-Ray, and publish the images to the web using third-party services like VRto.me or IrisVR Scope,” Larsen says.

4. VR has some catching up to do with the architecture industry.

VR requires a fair amount of expertise, and it’s challenging for architects to find work time to experiment with the technology. “For the most part, VR relies on gaming engines to develop these immersive experiences,” Mottle says. “That has a whole different workflow and paradigm than architecture.”

He hopes that manufacturers will see the potential for developing VR solutions specifically geared toward architecture. Already, some firms are translating BIM data into VR with platforms such as Autodesk LIVE and Stingray, which maintains important building data that other gaming systems don’t capture. For now, though, gaming systems tend to focus on creating idealized end-user VR experiences rather than applications for iterative building-project design and construction.

The more architects get involved with VR, the more they can shape the future marketplace. “I’d really like to see these VR companies realize that there’s a market beyond gaming and the consumer market,” Mottle says. “I would like them to see that there are some huge opportunities and synergies with the design world.”

But Larsen says architects shouldn’t wait to dig in: “Get a PC-based VR system like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift for exploring design from BIM tools, and play with mobile VR using cardboard and Gear VR and Google’s View to distribute your designs in VR to clients and collaborators alike. The most important thing is to start experimenting.”

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This article originally appeared on Autodesk’s Redshift, a site dedicated to inspiring designers, engineers, builders, and makers.

Kim O’Connell is a Washington, D.C. area writer specializing in history, nature, architecture, and life. In addition to writing for a range of national and regional publications, she is a former writer in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Shenandoah National Park. She can be reached via her website, kimaoconnell.com.

The post 4 Tips to Get Started with Virtual Reality in Architecture appeared first on Archipreneur.

The AEC industry suffers from a disproportionate number of male over female professionals. A large number of female architects leave the profession early on in their careers, with unequal pay and the tendency to be overlooked in for senior positions cited alongside many other reasons.

Given these issues, why should women consider archipreneurship? Wouldn’t all the obstacles that come with being an entrepreneur simply add to the prevailing obstacles for women working in the field of architecture? Although running an enterprise will naturally involve a certain level of stress, being one’s own boss in archipreneurship enables women to compete with their male counterparts on a more equal playing field. Archipreneurship, then, presents an interesting alternative for women who don’t want to climb a male dominated hierarchy of conventionally run architecture practices.

This hypothesis – that archipreneurship opens up opportunities for women and levels the playing field – is supported by the last two Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys, which showed that female-led startups were more resilient during the 2008 recession, and that there has been a 40 percent increase of women (compared to 20 percent of men) going into self-employment since 2000. “An estimated 7 million female entrepreneurs and 5 million female business owners worldwide plan to grow their businesses by at least six employees over the next five years.”

The following 7 female archipreneurs prove that they can practice architecture with autonomy and passion by taking alternative approaches that add value for clients and communities.

Gunita Kulikovska

Designer and entrepreneur Gunita Kuļikovska works at the intersection between architecture and technology. She made it onto Forbes Latvia’s 2016 “30 under 30” list, and co-founded GO VR Studio, a company developing professional applications of virtual reality for the AEC industry. Their flagship product, Vividly, allows architects, real estate developers, construction companies and clients to experience and modify projects before they’re built. In 2015, Kulikovska initiated the project and exhibition World without Architect? for the third Tallinn Architecture Biennale in 2015 that allowed visitors to participate in designing a house in VR, customize the designs, and 3D print their creations.

“I refused to believe that the only mission of a young architect in this world was to design forms and structures according to building regulations, and being beholden to a constant, competitive environment – all for tiny fees,” she explained in an interview for Archipreneur, “so Go VR Studio answered the question of how to unleash the potential of an architectural mindset and create real value.”

Anupama Kundoo

Indian architect Anupama Kundoo designs low-cost modular homes across India. She started her practice in 1990 where she was engaged as a researcher and teacher at several prestigious schools, including the AA School of Architecture in London and Parsons School of Design in New York. As a female architect, she has been at the forefront of the trend to build easily maintained and sustainable homes using modular elements. Her practice has enabled communities to build affordable, quality modular homes that have a low environmental footprint.

For the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Kundoo brought together a team of Indian craftsmen and students from the University of Queensland and the Università Iuav di Venezia to build a full-sized model of her already completed 2000 project in India. The team used ferrocement for the model, which allowed them to build the house just as one would do with Lego blocks. Kundoo is a great example of how architects can combine research, teaching and practice to address a specific issue.

Courtney Brett Bridges

Courtney Brett Bridges went to college at 14, got into Auburn University’s architecture program at 16, worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) at 20, and at 24 became the youngest licensed architect in the history of the American Institute of Architects. Instead of climbing the ranks at SOM, she decided to create her own firm, Casburn Brett Architects, in 2012 in Alabama, away from big urban centers where most architecture practices set up shop. Around this time, she caught the eye of lean urbanism evangelist Andrés Duany, with whom she collaborated on a new master plan for High Point, North Carolina.

Brett Bridges focused her efforts on keeping her business approach lean and bettering small communities instead of opening several offices across the country. “In some small communities we come in and talk about lessening parking requirements and doing natural drainage, with buildings that are right on the road and walkable,” Brett Bridges told Curbed. She continues to work as an architect while she acts as a mediator between local government and developers.

Rocio Romero

Rocio Romero is a 35-year-old Chilean-American architect and entrepreneur. Her line of prefab houses, LV Homes, come as flexible designs that clients can purchase for under $50,000. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. She designed her first house for her parents in Chile, which later evolved into the LV Home and became the basis of her business.

Romero works with individual manufacturers to acquire trusses, wall panels and exterior cladding materials, and has the units transported via flatbed semi-trailers. By productizing her services, Romero has created a sustainable enterprise that allows for the streamlined production of beautifully designed living units. With Romero’s approach, clients know the value they get for their money as they can experiment with all the aspects of their house before it’s created, from layouts to sizes and finishes.

Tracy Young

Tracy Young is the founder of PlanGrid, an extremely popular mobile construction app that digitizes documentation such as reports, field notes, change orders and any type of document used during construction processes that would otherwise come in paper form. The app combines cloud-based storage with portable devices like the iPad.

Before starting her own company, Young worked as a construction field engineer on several civil projects. After experiencing the cumbersome nature of working with documents on construction sites, she recognized the need for a tool that would save construction companies money, reduce paper waste and maximize efficiency.

To establish PlanGrid, Young and her friend Ryan Sutton-Gee quit their jobs, brought on board two more co-founders, and put all their effort into building the company. The business has since seen a surge in users and has become the number one app for the construction industry.

Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph

Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph of Design, Bitches built their design firm by addressing a specific, growing niche in the architecture of Los Angeles. Their designs are closely connected to the food scene in LA and are infused with references to popular culture, movies, art and fashion. So far, they have designed several restaurants and food-related venues.

Both Johnson and Rudolph made the AR Women in Architecture Awards 2016 shortlist as a power duo that’s taking Los Angeles by storm. The humor and playfulness with which they approach design is embodied in their name. In an interview for LA Weekly Johnson said, “When we take our drawings to get building permits, our name makes the ladies at the building department smile.”

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