Date of Submission
Spring 5-4-2018
Degree Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Chris Welty
Secondary Advisor
Arief Setiawan
Abstract
As architects, most of us go through years of training and experience just to read and draw plans, sections, and elevations. As students, we are taught how to read a plan and dissect the information we need to understand the spatial relationships. There are many times, however, that a plan doesn’t really tell us what experiencing this space is like. And how is the untrained client supposed to understand how this space really works? Isn’t that our job as architects, to represent our designs well enough to our clients that we communicate to them everything necessary for understanding this space that THEY hired US to design? How then, especially to the untrained eye, are we to use a packet of drawings of the space to really allow them to understand?
In the past, we have used renderings and perspectives to achieve this. But this comes at a cost to the client, and doesn’t always give the full detail of the space. Every type of media we use has strengths and limitations to represent and communicate design, but each new medium has afected the way we think about design. What if, through the way we use our knowledge of representational media, we could not only give clients lacking the years of training we have the ability to experience the designs we are making, but also enhance the way we communicate design so as to minimize the false perceptions in the built process?
I think the answer for architects lies in the power of virtual reality as a graphic representational tool. Yes, I’m talking a change from architecture being represented in 2D to a 3D representational style. My thesis explores virtual reality and its potential to allow architects to draw and design in 3 dimensional spaces, and takes a look at how this medium can afect our techniques of communication and representation of design.