26,416 research outputs found
Augmented reality meeting table: a novel multi-user interface for architectural design
Immersive virtual environments have received widespread attention as providing possible replacements for the media and systems that designers traditionally use, as well as, more generally, in providing support for collaborative work. Relatively little attention has been given to date however to the problem of how to merge immersive virtual environments into real world work settings, and so to add to the media at the disposal of the designer and the design team, rather than to replace it. In this paper we report on a research project in which optical see-through augmented reality displays have been developed together with prototype decision support software for architectural and urban design. We suggest that a critical characteristic of multi user augmented reality is its ability to generate visualisations from a first person perspective in which the scale of rendition of the design model follows many of the conventions that designers are used to. Different scales of model appear to allow designers to focus on different aspects of the design under consideration. Augmenting the scene with simulations of pedestrian movement appears to assist both in scale recognition, and in moving from a first person to a third person understanding of the design. This research project is funded by the European Commission IST program (IST-2000-28559)
The musealisation of the artist's house as architectural project
Artistâs houses that are opened to the public as museums shift from a private and everyday to a semi-public and institutional functioning. This transformation of an artistâs house into a house-museum might appear as a mere legal issue or as a matter of making previously secluded rooms and collections accessible to the public. But this musealisation of an artistâs house always involves a set of museological and architectural interventions as well. Not only need the house and its content to be displayed as historical documents through a careful mise-en-scĂšne and through the addition of a sub-text of labels or explanatory panels that disclose the meaning of these historical documents; there is also a need for a logic and clear visitorâs route in a house that was not intended for this. Often this already demands architectural design decisions, but it is mainly in the introduction of the supporting museum functions like the necessary office spaces and an entrance hall with reception desk, cloakroom and bathrooms that the musealisation comes down to an architectural design challenge. The proposed paper wants to discuss the artistâs house museum from an architectâs point of view, on the basis of a selection of artistâs houses that were recently transformed into museums, such as the Atelier-Museum Luc Peire in Knokke (B) or the renovations of the Permeke and Rubens house museums. I want to propose the artistâs house museum as an architectural typology by mapping its various typical architectural and spatial characteristics. The first crucial point of interest here is how the spatial division is articulated between the historic interiors, the exhibition spaces and the museumâs service spaces outside of the visitorâs circuit. A second architectural question is how the museum as an active institution can be given an architectural âfaceâ while respecting and presenting the house and its collections as historical documents; how can both the âauthenticâ private atmosphere and the contemporary public museum be given shape, and is there a place for authorial design in this mediating exercise
Megastructures: a great-size solution for affordable housing. The case study of Rome
During the 70âs and 80âs, affordable housing production in Europe faced the huge
emergency caused by rising urbanization. In suburban areas of European main cities,
megastructures appeared, drawing visible marks in urban fabric. Megastructures were
planned to synthesize residential functions and all existing services of traditional city in
unique buildings. Nowadays, these buildings are affected by bad physical conditions and
they are no longer able to satisfy the needs of the contemporary demand. The proposed
paper investigates the genesis of housing megastructures with particular regards to the
Italian case and council housing districts realized in Rome within the 1st public plan for
council and affordable housing (1964), an original plan for the settlement of 700,000
inhabitants. A focus will be proposed concerning the differences between megastructures
and traditional big buildings and the main connections between the spread of great-size
buildings and the industrialization and automatization of construction techniques. An
insight about possible future regenerations intervention is suggested
An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form
How well can designers communicate qualities of touch?
This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makersâ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designersâ capabilities
PULP-HD: Accelerating Brain-Inspired High-Dimensional Computing on a Parallel Ultra-Low Power Platform
Computing with high-dimensional (HD) vectors, also referred to as
, is a brain-inspired alternative to computing with
scalars. Key properties of HD computing include a well-defined set of
arithmetic operations on hypervectors, generality, scalability, robustness,
fast learning, and ubiquitous parallel operations. HD computing is about
manipulating and comparing large patterns-binary hypervectors with 10,000
dimensions-making its efficient realization on minimalistic ultra-low-power
platforms challenging. This paper describes HD computing's acceleration and its
optimization of memory accesses and operations on a silicon prototype of the
PULPv3 4-core platform (1.5mm, 2mW), surpassing the state-of-the-art
classification accuracy (on average 92.4%) with simultaneous 3.7
end-to-end speed-up and 2 energy saving compared to its single-core
execution. We further explore the scalability of our accelerator by increasing
the number of inputs and classification window on a new generation of the PULP
architecture featuring bit-manipulation instruction extensions and larger
number of 8 cores. These together enable a near ideal speed-up of 18.4
compared to the single-core PULPv3
Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)
Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the âmachinesâ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding ÂŁ87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: âą 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. âą 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. âą 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles
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