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Virtual Reality: The Latest Architecture and News

Call for Entries: Vimania Architecture Competition

Augmented reality provides us with new research field of architecture. Now you do not need architectural models. We can see the building as it is with all the details as a virtual model. These properties of augmented reality give us new opportunities. For example, we can compare the buildings from different regions of the world, from different eras in the same scale. We can make collections of buildings, unimaginable compositions.

Explore Frank Lloyd Wright's Curvaceous Unbuilt House Design for Marilyn Monroe

Some unbuilt designs—the hopes they reveal and the reasons they stayed unbuilt—tell a powerful story. So it is with the home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. Or perhaps it’s what we think we know about Marilyn that makes it so poignant?

The union between a quiet-living intellectual and the world’s greatest sex symbol was baffling to the public, and the conflict between their aspirations and personalities seems to have played out in their plans for this Connecticut home. After moving into Miller’s country retreat, Monroe asked Wright to design a new house for them on this vast piece of land.

Tour Frank Lloyd Wright's Final (Unbuilt) House Design With this 3D Model

The last house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was never built, with its plans being delivered to the client just days after Wright’s funeral. But the realization of his vision is tantalizingly possible, as those plans, and the parcel of land it was designed for, are still held by the same family—and are for sale, along with the adjoining plot and an existing Wright house.

Updated Displays and Graphics Processors Improve iMacs’ Capabilities for Architectural Software

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today, the US-based tech giant announced the latest slate of performance updates to their software and hardware products. Targeting software developers and other high-end users, the event was highlighted by the announcement of significant upgrades to their computer’s graphics and processing capabilities—or in architect’s terms—the components required to work on projects like creating content within a VR experience or real-time 3D rendering.

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A Virtual Look Inside the Case Study House #2 by Sumner Spaulding and John Rex

The second house in Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study Houses program shows the hallmarks of the series: an emphasis on light-soaked living areas, indoor-outdoor living, strong horizontal lines dominated by a flat roof, and so on. It is distinguished, though, by particularly creative details linking the indoor and outdoor areas, and by a strong awareness of function.

Will Virtual Reality Transform the Way Architects Design?

Over fifty years ago, Bob Dylan sang the words that we still know so well today, “the times, they are a changin’.” He was right.

We’ve seen change happen all around us. Architecture looked pretty different 50, 30, and even 10 years ago. And the technology powering the industry has evolved to keep pace. First, with a move from the drafting table to the computer screen with 2D CAD, and now to Building Information Modeling (BIM) where information-rich 3D models allow architects to create in unprecedented ways.

Architecture Gear Giveaway: Complete Samsung 360 Set

Are you planning an architectural odyssey between the months of June and August? If so, we’ve got some exciting news! We want to equip two ArchDaily readers with a full set of virtual reality products from Samsung--a Galaxy S8 phone, a Gear 360 camera, and a Gear VR headset! With this top-of-the-line, brand new technology you can record, 30 minutes of live stream, and share your site visits between a wide range of devices.

For the past year we have been committed to exploring and furthering the potential of Virtual Reality for architectural applications. As part of this initiative, we are thrilled to partner with Samsung, creating the opportunity to collect and disseminate 360 experiences of important projects with the help of the ArchDaily mind hive.

Applying for a chance to take the gear on the road is simple!

Trends in Architectural Representation: Understanding The Techniques

The representation of architecture is important in the absence of tangible space. Throughout a lifetime, even the most devoted, well-travelled design enthusiast will experience only a small percentage of architectural works with their own eyes. Consider that we exist in only one era of architectural history, and the percentage reduces even further. Many architectural works go unbuilt, and the buildings we experience in person amount to a grain of sand in a vast desert.

Then we consider the architecture of the future. For buildings not yet built, representation is not a luxury, but a necessity to test, communicate and sell an idea. Fortunately, today’s designers have unprecedented means to depict ideas, with an explosion in technology giving us computer-aided drafting, photo-realistic rendering, and virtual reality. Despite these vast strides, however, the tools of representation are a blend of old and new – from techniques which have existed for centuries, to the technology of our century alone. Below, we give five answers to the question of how architecture should be depicted before it is built.

This New VR Analytics Tool Allows Architects to Track Users' Attention Within a Virtual Model

With virtual reality technology becoming a more and more common tool in architecture offices, engineers have already begun thinking about the next wave of advancements that could add even more functionality into their products. One of these advancements is through the use of one of the information age’s biggest revolutions: analysis of user feedback.

Lauching today, 3D visualization company InsiteVR has implemented these features into their software for the first time – allowing architects to learn about how people are viewing their models in real time.

Envisioning the City of the Future: Making the Invisible Visible

The international contest is open to students, graduates and experts and its aim is to imagine and design possible scenarios of the city of the future: How will smart and sharing cities look like in the future? How are these changes going to impact on people’s lives in cities?

Take a Virtual "Fly-Through" of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon With This 3D Model

The Star Wars universe contains some impressive buildings. However, in the original trilogy, it's actually the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's non-descript yet highly tuned ship, that provides the most important architectural setting for the story's events, acting as the de facto base for our heroes' scheming. While it's certainly not the largest or most complex floor plan in the universe, the interior of the Millennium Falcon is intriguing for the way it resolves the ship's circular shape.

With this model from Archilogic of the Millennium Falcon's main floor, Star Wars fans can get a sense of what it's like to tag along with Luke, Han, and the rest of the group—whether that's by hanging out in the living area, traversing the ship's curved corridors, or even sitting in the cockpit as an Imperial Star Destroyer approaches, the model has it all.

A Virtual Look Inside the Case study house #12 by Whitney R Smith

In designing his (unbuilt) house for the Arts & Architecture Case Study program, Whitney Smith, like Richard Neutra, prioritized the connection to outdoor space. His motivation, however, was more specific than a desire to extend the living area of a small house. Rather, he wanted to create a highly personal space, geared to the passion of his hypothetical client. Seeing conventional plans as a straitjacket for residents who craved appropriate working space within their home (be it a sewing studio or a photography darkroom), he aspired to fit this house to the needs of a keen horticulturist.

Archhive: Architecture in Virtual Reality Competition Winners Announced

Bee Breeders has announced the winners of its Archhive: Architecture in Virtual Reality competition, which asked participants to design a virtual exhibition gallery to showcase future Bee Breeders competition winners. In this virtual gallery, visitors would be able to “walk” around and explore the work of selected winners and guest contributors.

The three winners of Archhive: Architecture in Virtual Reality are:

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This Kickstarter Camera Mimics Human Eyesight

The team at TwoEyes Tech made up of HunJoo Song, SeonAh Kim, and Vivek Soni has launched a kickstarter campaign for its TwoEyes VR 360 camera, which is the first binocular 360-degree VR, 4K camera that mirrors human eye sight.

Using two pairs of 180-degree lenses that are placed 65 millimeters apart—the average distance between a person’s eyes—the camera captures 360-degree footage, “just like your natural eyes would view the world.” This footage can be uploaded to 360-degree-compatible social media platforms like YouTube 360, Facebook 360, and Twitter 360, or enjoyed through virtual reality binoculars or 3D television.

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4 Tips to Get Started With Virtual Reality in Architecture

This article was originally published by Autodesk's Redshift publication.

You are walking through an elegant house, admiring the large living-room windows, the paintings on the wall, and the spacious kitchen. Pendant lights cast a soft glow, the terrazzo flooring gleams beneath your feet, the furnishings feel inviting. Then you take off the virtual-reality goggles and resume your meeting.

This scenario is becoming increasingly common as more architects incorporate virtual reality (VR) into their practices. Along with its cousins—augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR)—virtual reality allows designers to push the boundaries of visualization, giving colleagues and clients new ways to experience and understand a building or space long before it is actually built. With VR, architects can transmit not just what a building will look like, but also what it will feel like.

A Virtual Look Into Richard Neutra's Unbuilt Case Study House #13, The Alpha House

Of the four homes designed by Richard Neutra for the Case Study Houses program, post-war thought experiments commissioned by Arts & Architecture, only one was ever realized. In the imaginary village of the program's many unbuilt homes, next to #6, the Omega house, stands #13, named Alpha. Archilogic’s 3D model gives us a unique chance to experience this innovative concept home.

Each of Neutra’s projects was designed for a family of five, and each reveals his psychoanalytic approach to architecture, in which the house itself is an intimate part of family relationships, as important as the personalities involved. (Neutra was personally acquainted with Freud, and a committed follower of birth trauma theorist Otto Rank.) Underlining this Freudian view, his imaginary clients are not just neighbours—they are related; Mrs Alpha being sister to Mrs Omega.

Tour These London Landmarks Without Leaving Your Couch

Architectural photographer Rod Edwards specializes in 360º virtual reality imagery and virtual tours of iconic buildings. Having spent the last decade producing this type of media, Edwards was recently commissioned by Visit Britain to shoot his “More London” project as part of the global campaign for the 2015 James Bond film “Spectre.”

Read on to see “More London” and more projects by Edwards.

A Virtual Look Into Mies van der Rohe's Core House

Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

In 1951, Mies van der Rohe designed the Core House, a participative design structure which could be completed by its inhabitants.

This flexible model challenged certain architectural concepts, explored new industrial technologies, and proposed a modular system to improve the quality and affordability of housing.