Interview featured in ACSA and Study Architecture website

 

supporting Architecture in the Age of Mixed Reality: The DAAP Library @ the University of Cincinnati.

Column by Jennifer H. Krivickas/ Assistant Vice President for Integrated Research Head of the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library/Adjunct Instructor: DAAP Schools of Design & Art/College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) University of Cincinnati

At the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP), future-forward faculty are exploring with virtual reality (VR) to conduct research, make, and teach. Consequently the DAAP Library invested in a collection of ‘over the counter’ VR viewers such as Mr. Cardboard, I am Cardboard, P2 popups, unofficial cardboard, smartvr, pocket 360vr, View Master, and a few others. Funnily, since acquiring the viewers late last year, several people have asked “Why?” It is not a bad question per se, but to us the answer is…well, obvious.

DAAP Library users are architects – designers in and of space, so having the ability to create structures that actually look feel and sound like eventual physical structures, is huge. Another part of DAAP is the School of Planning, whose students, through the use of VR tech, are able to better convey size and scope of large-scale projects, a problem 2D renderings and passé, not to mention, unsustainable physical models have always posed. An important component of DAAP is our top-ranked design school where students are already designing all sorts of unorthodox next gen physical and virtual objects from web experiences to transportation to fashion objects and products…all of which can and will be translated, by our students, into and out of, virtual reality.

DAAP faculty member Prof. Ming Tang is teaching Architecture in the age of mixed reality, a studio that explores the relationship between virtual reality and physical architecture. His students investigate mixed reality as a framework that can expand architectural strategies such as environmental conceptualism, user interaction, building function, and construction techniques. In this class, the group studies topics such as physical and digital crossovers, augmented and virtual realities, time and ephemerality and the impacts on both architecture and architecture practice.

Thesis: Layered Space

This is the thesis book of my graduate student Adam Sambuco: 

Layered Space

Toward an Architecture of Superimposition

by Adam J. Sambuco
University of Cincinnati, 2018

Degree. Master of Architecture

Thesis Chair. Ming Tang

Historically, the physical nature of architecture has caused it to remain functionally static despite evolving theories, materials, and technologies. The design of spaces and the actions of occupants are fundamentally limited by the laws of physics. This thesis and associated project explore and present ways in which architectural spaces can incorporate extended reality to enhance the design and use of buildings in ways that were not previously possible. Due to their part physical, part-virtual nature, superimposed spaces can change over time, on demand, or contextually, based on their inhabitants. Extended reality can assist with wayfinding, socialization, organization, personalization, contextualization, and more. This thesis asserts that it is essential for architects to familiarize themselves with this technology, exploring new methods of design and presentation for such radically different end products.

It is with this in mind that this document establishes the basic functionality, terminology, and history of extended reality before moving on to more modern capabilities. After a glimpse into the near future of XR and a look at its relationship to architecture, the philosophical basis for treating the virtual as real is explored. Having establishing its history, functionality, and reality, the idea of spatial superimposition is then explored through the lenses of visitor, designer, and presenter. My previous work is then covered, touching on how XR technology will become normalized in society and investigating an approach to XR renovations that brings virtual mansions to the masses. Finally, my thesis project, an XR-enabled media the que in downtown Dallas, is introduced and my processes of creation, experimentation, and presentation are detailed so that others might learn from and build off them. Despite its large scope and cutting-edge subject matter, this work scrutinizes only a small portion of the changes that extended reality will undoubtedly bring to architecture and greater society.

View the full thesis book. 168 pages. 14MB 

 

VR show in 2018 DAAPworks

VR show of Prof. Ming Tang’s Architecture studio at UC DAAP, a mix of virtual reality and augmented reality style exhibition. 

Faculty: Ming Tang, Xiaoying Meng

Student: Gabriel Berning, Bhattiprolu Chamundi Saila Snigdha, Owen Blodgett, Mason Boling, Tyler Dunn, Michael Greer, Isaac Keller, Anna Kick,Connor Kramer, Nathan Mohamedali, Aashna Sharad Poddar, Yiying Qiu, Jordan Sauer, Edward Simpson, Dongrui Zhu

 

 

Location: CGC Computer Lab ( 4425 E), DAAP, UC.

Project: Train Station in Beijing, China. Studio brief.

Exhibition  time. 04.24-04.27.

 

 

Pleae check out 15 project posters here. 

 

 

project featured in UC Magazine

Flight of the future

UC students, faculty and industry leaders converge at the Live Well Collaborative to create innovative, internationally recognized technology for Boeing.

The project was norminated as the finalist of 2018 Crystal Cabin Award and exhibited at the Crystal Cabin Award at the Aircraft Interior Expo at the Hamburg Messe, Germany 04. 10-12.2018

read the full article here. 

By Jac Kern. UC Magazine

“DAAP professor Ming Tang’s specialty in design visualization, using interactive media like VR and AR to communicate a design concept, made him a perfect fit for this project.

“Sometimes you need a really strong visual to sell an idea,” Tang explains. “We quickly set up a pipeline involving students with graphic design, 3-D modeling and animation skills, scripting and programming as well as user interface. The team assembled some very big ideas into a model people can see and even interact with in VR and AR.”

read the full article here. 

 

“Optical Illusions of Volume” exhibition in Venice

Mara Marcu, Ming Tang, Adam Schueler’s project “Optical Illusions of Volume” is exhibited at the ‘DATA & MATTER’ Exhibition in Venice
Palazzo Bembo, Riva del Carbon, Venice, Italy.  May 24th to November 25th 2018

“Optical Illusions of Volume” critiques the ubiquitous obsession with optimization in computational design and fabrication. As an alternative, “Bubbles” begins to exploit misbehaviors in the ideal file to factory methodology. The work reconciles conflicting attitudes between traditional CAD/CAM strategies, augmented reality, and analog post-processing techniques. The project employs the use of a lightweight sheet material, parametric design, holographic imaging, and investigates accidental and more intuitive assembly strategies. In this way, we develop techniques within the digital process that exploit a non-linear design and fabrication approach in which the human and the machine become increasingly disrespectful of each other’s artificially delineated boundary. Therefore, what are considered by norm flaws, or faulty formations, can open up intriguing opportunities in architecture, otherwise neglected.

Mara Marcu is an architect and professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati, School of Architecture and Interior Design. Founder of MMXlll (which stands for Merely Maybe x Idyllic Imagination Inflicted–or simply– MM Thirteen), she structures her work around various collections. Their focus ranges from optical illusions of volume, mathematical experiments, the metamorphosis of two dimensional material to three dimensional form, the possibility of endless variation through human interaction, the natural versus the artificial (and “the everything else” that lies in between), emergent textures, degrees of transparency, breeding taxonomies to emergent primitives.

Ming Tang is an architect and professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati, School of Architecture and Interior Design. He is the founding partner of TYA Design–a multi-disciplinary research practice which includes computational design, digital fabrication, BIM, performance driven design, virtual reality & augmented reality, crowd simulation & way-finding, and human-computer interaction (HCI).

Adam Schueler is an architectural designer, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati, School of Architecture and Interior Design and a Master of Architecture candidate at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. His work prioritizes a keen interest in the less than ideal, in the peculiar and the sublime over the ever-changing architectural style.


 

 

Augmented Reality through your mobile phones

Please scan the QR code, or follow this link below to download HP Reveal

http://auras.ma/s/oV3j5

01. Point your phone camera app at the QR code to scan.
02. Open the URL link in browser.
03. Download the “HP Reveal” app.
04. Follow the steps to install the app.
05. Re-point your phone to the QR code and scan again.
06. Open the URL link in browser.
07. Choose “follow.” You don’t need to sign in.
08. Open the “HP Reveal” app.
09. Scan the tracking image on the front.
10. You should see a virtual model pop up. Tap the object to switch display, or double tap to open our web page.

 

The ‘DATA & MATTER’ Exhibition is hosted by the GAA Foundation, European Cultural Centre that will take place at the Palazzo Bembo during the Architecture Venice Biennale 2018, from May 24th to November 25th 2018 in Venice, Italy.  This exhibition presents a group of projects by leading international designers using emerging and novel forms of reading and producing spatial conditions that connect/visualize data, responsive systems, and sensing/actuation technologies, through micro and macro scales. The exhibition takes the opportunity to exhibit a range of projects, side by side, that transform data as an abstraction into spatial and experiential configurations. It aims at triggering discussion and debate on how the use of data in design methodologies and theoretical discourses have evolved in the last two decades and why processes of data measurement, quantification, simulation, ubiquitous technologies and algorithmic control, and their integration into methods of making architectural form and spatial experiences, are becoming vital in academic and industry practices.

www.palazzobembo.org
Room #13A

 

Organization/Location:
GGA Foundation
European Cultural Centre
Venice, Italy
http://www.globalartaffairs.org/

Curatorial Team:
Marcella del Signore, Associate Professor, New York Institute of Technology, NY, USA
Nancy Diniz, Assistant Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA
Frank Melendez, Assistant Professor, City College of New York, CUNY, NY, USA

https://dataandmatter.wordpress.com/