Virtual environments as medium for laypeople to communicate and collaborate in urban design

Abstract

Regarding laypeople’s active participation with artefacts in the early stage of urban design, there is a certain difference between conventional urban design process and participatory urban design process. The design artefacts used in the conventional urban design process do not allow laypeople to take part actively in the early stages of the design process. Similarly, in the participatory design process, the generated design ideas remain hidden in assumption due to the lack of associated information of the artefacts and the participants perform as individual actors. The research speculates that a virtual immersive participatory design instrument can reduce the gap, where the participants can act together as a unit to produce authentic design outcomes. An Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) assisted design experiment set-up has developed for laypeople to engage in a shared and enhanced communicative platform. The article reports the procedure of developing the instrument and discusses them in terms of design communication, participation and expert’s role. It concludes with a reflection of how laypeople as co-designers can use IVE instruments to design their neighbourhood meaningfully.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban design
• laypeople
• immersive virtual environment
• design communication
• collaboration
• expert's role

Acknowledgements

New Zealand’s National Science Challenge ‘Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities (BBHTC) – Shaping Places: Future Neighbourhoods’ has supported the research reported in this paper. The Victoria University of Wellington Human Ethics Committee has approved the research (#0000025705).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Challenge “Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities (BBHTC)” with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Notes on contributors

S. Chowdhury

S. Chowdhury is a PhD Candidate in Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington and an Architectural Tutor in Southern Institute of Technology. His work focuses on computational design generation, production, communication and collaboration. He is an aligned researcher for National Science Challenge, Building Better, Homes, towns and Cities (BBHTC) project- Shaping Future Neighbourhood in New Zealand. He is a member in Digital Architecture Research Alliance (DARA). Prior to his study at VUW, Shuva has practiced architecture in Bangladesh and taught at American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB). He holds a professional degree in architecture from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), a M. Arch in Digital Design Pathway from Mackintosh School of Architecture (GSA), Glasgow, UK, and a post-professional degree in architectural design from Barcelona Institute of Architecture (affiliated by UPC and UPF), Barcelona, Spain.

M. A. Schnabel

Professor M. A. Schnabel is the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Trained as an Architect, he is leading research in the field of architectural computation. He has taught and worked in Germany, Australia, and Hong Kong for thirty years and has become highly recognized for his work in the areas of computational design, augmented- and virtual reality, digital heritage, parametric design learning and intelligent cities. He has been the President of the ‘Architectural Science Association’ (ANZAScA) for seven years, established the ‘Digital Architecture Research Alliance’–DARA–as well as the online social network ‘Urban Digitalics’ connecting professionals and researchers in innovative digital spatial design. www.dara.digital