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AR in architectural and urban planning.
søren s. sørensen, architect / assistant professor
the oslo school of architecture and design, norway.

AHO
aho is an independent higher education institution within
the Norwegian university system
and one of the leading schools and research centres in
the fields of architecture and urbanism in Scandinavia.

Architectural practice
Urban planning and the design of large scale architectural
projects today utilise traditional techniques as projections,
perspectives, 2D data and 3D physical and digital models.
These embody both the need for abstraction and
interpretation and thus the subject matter is difficult to
understand and can mislead those not trained in the field.

prevailing view on representation:
...the notion or understanding
that value-neutral representations as
plan, section and details collectively
constitutes the total idea ...

Current representation of the man-made environment:
• Two dimensional: plans, sections, elevations
• Three dimensional: sketches, perspectives, models, virtual reality.
The limitation of these types of representations is that viewers are
always positioned outside the representation, they remain spectators
rather than participants.

- one still has the problem of understanding space
and the scale of proposed projects.
interactive digital models can give a solution to this...

Sensorama Simulator,
US Patent #3,050,870, 1962
1963: I. Sutherland's doctoral theses: Sketchpad.
stereo HMD/ position tracking/ graphics engine.
1966: T. Furness: display systems for pilots
1967: Brooks: GROPE force feedback system
1977: Sandin and Sayre: bendsensing glove
1979: Raab et al: Polhemus tracking system
1989: Jaron Lanier coins the term virtual reality
1994: VR Society formed etc…

In a VR model all parts of a scene has to be digitally constructed,
which requires extensive work for the making of the model and
highly specified and expensive hardware for the regeneration of
them.
Orientation in a VR model is not intuitive, the feeling of presence is
hard to achieve and the problem of scale is still not solved in
screen based systems.
That is, even though one moves through digital models that closely
resembles a reality, it is experienced as a scale model on a screen.
Advantage with VR-models is that they can be easily shared and
distributed.

Augmented Reality is a further development of the technology
and is understood as a combination of digital models and the
physical world.
An AR system generates a composite view with a combination of
a virtual model or scene and the physical, real life setting in
which the viewer is located.
The technology has until recently been expensive, resource
demanding and requiring advanced knowledge in the field.
Due to these factors the use has been
limited mainly to military use, medical
research and other highly specialised
applications

examples on research
on AR in urban planning:

example 1:
Augmented Urban Planning Workbench:
Overlaying Drawings, Physical Models and Digital Simulation
Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory
Department of Urban Studies and Planning/Department of Architecture,
MIT School of Architecture and Planning
IEEE & ACM ISMAR 2002
to solve the: "problem in the spatial and temporal separation between the varying
forms of representation used in urban design"...
they " propose an Augmented Reality Workbench ... that attempts to address this
issue by integrating multiple forms of physical and digital representations.
2D drawings, 3D physical models, and digital simulation are overlaid into a single
information space in order to support the urban design process."

example 2:
INTERACT’03
ARTHUR: A Collaborative Augmented Environment for
Architectural Design and Urban Planning
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, Germany
The Bartlett, University College London, Linie 4 Architekten, Germany
Human-Computer Interaction
.."real collaborative approach to architectural design and urban planning is often
limited to early paper-based sketches.
In order to overcome these limitations, we designed ... the ARTHUR system, an
Augmented Reality enhanced round table to support complex design and planning
decisions for architects. ... our approach does not try to replace the use of CAD systems
but rather integrates them seamlessly into the collaborative AR environment."

aho and ife

aho and ife
- AHO and IFE has a strategic agreement on cooperation.
- common areas of interest between the two institutions
regarding the use of virtual- and augmented reality in
planning processes.
- completed one preliminary VR project funded by the Norwegian
Research Council;
designing for the disabled: ”The use of Virtual Reality in
planning”.

aho and ife
AR projects:
(syn)aesthetics;
Diplomaproject by architectural student Halvor Høgset.
church of St. Margareta;
reconstruction of a mediaeval church north of oslo
by means of augmented reality.
ongoing development of research on the use of AR in architecture
and planning of the built environment.

proof of concept 1
ife, halden

proof of concept 2
halvor høgset: diploma

proof of concept 3
margareta church 2005

ar-lab, norway
contributions:
ife has developed augmented reality software and systems for
use in the atomic energy and oil industries.
aho has developed expertise in the area of visual representation
applied to the built environment.

- AR has the potential of helping us to manage
change in the man-made environment by
improving the way in which we represent
proposed architectural and urban change -