Design Visualization (Architecture)

Technological revolutions have changed the field of architecture exponentially. The advent of new technologies and digital tools will continue to advance the work of architects globally, aiding in architectural design, planning, implementation, and restoration.

The Handbook of Research on Emerging Digital Tools for Architectural Surveying, Modeling, and Representation presents expansive coverage on the latest trends and digital solutions being applied to architectural heritage. Spanning two volumes of research-based content, this publication is an all-encompassing reference source for scholars, IT professionals, engineers, architects, and business managers interested in current methodologies, concepts, and instruments being used in the field of architecture.

The aim of this paper is to point out the structural connection between two processes of the recent transformation of Montevideo’s urban landscape. One process is the explicit and intended governmental
incentive of muralism in Montevideo, especially in its most political
and touristic centric spaces. The other process, according to my interpretation, is the dissolution of politically engaged graffiti. Given graffiti’s inherent political potential, I hold that these phenomena contribute to disperse and, thus, to weaken the expressive power of the “urban graffiti”. By virtue of this dispersion, Montevideo is not merely undergoing a material transformation of the colours, compositions,
themes, and textures of its walls, but also a transformation of the
non-verbal ways by which the population conceives its socio-political
problems. Therefore, the phenomenon that I want to call into question is the actual reduction of the public ways of seeing into clearly
institutionalized visual patterns. The analogical, as well as the digital,
visual designs lose a necessary and rich source of popular ways of
visual thinking (graffiti). The main consequence of these processes is
a subtle form of depoliticization of Montevideo’s Agora by a state-imposed aestheticization

This PhD thesis deals with tridimensional survey methods application for acquiring physical Industrial Design products. 3D acquisition techniques are already applied in industrial design production but their role in every single process is not yet clearly identified. Besides this the complex objects shape highlight the limitations about the use of a single instrument, which can’t supply with good results for all industrial typology products. These factors are critically framed in industrial develop process, outlining the level definition of object complexity for the best selection of survey method for every situation. The actual limits of 3D acquisition systems are so identified and compared to integrated systems applied in fields different from Industrial Design. 3D acquisition and registration process knowledge is a basic step to pro-ceed in sensor fusion techniques. For this reason, resolution, precision and accuracy factors are analyzed stand alone and in comparison with characterization process of active and passive systems. Moreover the critical role of alignment phase inside the reverse modeling process is highlighted, defining critical parameters that influence alignment process and quality of final result. At the end integrated approaches are experi-mented on complex industrial products, proposing for every case study the best survey solution, that optimize the quality of the final model and the time spent in 3D modeling, gaining in alignment and quality control of great amount of data of object with complex shape or huge dimension. The relevant final results concern with the definition of an optimal solutions system for sensor fusion application, which improves 3D sensor per-formances and optimizes 3D modeling construction. Moreover these results enlarge the use of 3D sensor in Industrial Design applications, overcoming the problems due to mono-instrument methods.

In today's rapidly progressing increasingly competitive technological world, many businesses look to technology to improve efficiency within the workplace. Greater efficiency reduces wasted time and increases productivity which positively affects profitability.

Architectural Visualisation is the business of selling images and has operated under the same techniques and methods for over a decade without any evolution in methods or technique. The software used to create such images has improved greatly and as a result the visual fidelity and realism has increased; However artists spend a considerable amount of time creating art that under current business methodology is used for the singular purpose of creating a renders from different angles.

Some businesses and studios have already begun to adopt or replace their old practices with new ones based on games technology but the advancements have yet to permeate the mainstream of industry.

The goals of this thesis are to analyse current business practices and services through research and communication with industry professionals then document how games technologies could be utilised to realise a greater potential within current business workflow.
Testing of the artefact will allow this thesis to conclude upon the viability of integrating games technology within industry, creating a real-time solution in replacement of offline architecture visualisation.

Since the days of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, comic artists have been concerned with depicting architecture and the city. One of the many “communicating vessels”, which marked the birth of new media and the development of existing ones in a stratified and interconnected way in 20thcentury, has been established between comics and architecture. On the one hand, some architects, from Le Corbusier onwards, have appropriated the sequentiality and graphic informality of comics; on the other hand, comic artists and cartoonists have accredited themselves as complete artists by investigating architectural representation and appropriating the narrative methods and painting techniques of major arts. This process was mediated by cinema, which has demonstrated the potential of the author's architectural imagination – and unbuilt designs, especially– in forging the image of futuristic, alternative, perturbing, often dystopian worlds. At the same time, the architectural design communication, which could rely on a target who was more and more image-cultured, has been oriented towards narration, through a targeted and evocative use of atmosphere, environmental elements and human figures.
The graphic novels by Manuele Fior, formerly an architect and now an illustrator and comic artist, reserve a central role for places and architecture. He appears particularly interested in the utopian and social potential of certain modern works and does not limit himself to setting the scenes in constructions by authors such as Wright or Kahn but, as in Celestia, he also resorts to their unbuilt projects, specially explored through plans and sections. In particular, Fior does not plan the work through story-boards but “entrusts” its devolvement to his own characters, discovering the places and unraveling the plot and together with them. This modus operandi replicates the practice of architects who, through imagination and sketches explore their architectural designs in fieri, attributing even more value to the emergence of these relics from memory. Framed by the eyes of the characters, imbued with their human affairs and subordinated to the narration, selected buildings and places, in addition to describing the author's inner link with his own imagination, reveal their unexpressed semantic potential, accentuate the enigmatic and dreamlike nature of the stories and reflect on the architecture as a cultural device and as a means to raise the spirit and represent individuals and communities. In this way, forgotten or never built architectures access an after-life, open up to a new public and enjoy the unexpected opportunity, however fictitious, to host human life.

In architettura del paesaggio gli alberi svolgono un ruolo fondamentale. Sono elementi importanti nella definizione di parchi e spazi pubblici. Con la loro varietà di forme, colori, tessiture e grandezze caratterizzano i progetti definendo gli spazi da realizzare e le loro qualità. In questo articolo si discute su come la derivazione pittorica dell’architettura del paesaggio abbia avuto un sostanziale influsso nel modo in cui i progettisti si sono posti nel rappresentare gli alberi, soprattutto fra XVIII e XIX secolo, e come poi l’attenzione scientifica agli aspetti tecnici ne abbia esaltato la funzionalità in termini architettonici ed ecologici, fino ad arrivare ai nostri giorni in cui tecnologie, come la realtà aumentata, permettono un’interazione progettuale ed esperienziale che apre a pressoché infinite possibilità. Questo perché gli alberi sono fra i protagonisti del progetto di paesaggio esseri viventi con un carattere preciso e riconoscibile e dunque anche rappresentabile.

In architectural drawings, human figures are generally requested to express the scale of design space and to illustrate the functions, but many cases demonstrate they are capable of playing cultural roles, indirectly revealing the architects’ ideological  positions  toward  society.  By  comparing  their  use  in  the  work  of  Otto  Wagner,  Mies  van  de  Rohe,  Le  Corbusier,  and  Mansilla  and  Tuñón,  this  article  analyses  their  role  as  visual  mediator  between  representation  and  reality  according to the different graphical techniques and their intertextual potential to connote the representation and the specific figures adopted. In particular, it focuses on the case of the cameo, and the cameo of the architect in particular, to discuss the semantic consequences on the drawing and to frame it into the wider, pictorial typology of the portrait of  an architect.

In this presentation I will present the research developed lately in ISTAR-IUL regarding the use of digital technologies, namely Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) to explore architecture contents, namely the ones focusing cultural tourism, through several perspectives.
The goal of this research is to combine knowledge from several disciplines, including History of Architecture and the City, Architecture in the broadest sense, Information and Communication Technologies (with an emphasis on Computer Graphics) and Tourism studies. These fields have been integrated in the development of a common base of information on the architecture of cities. In general, the main goals of our research are: i) to create an information system that allows access to digital information useful for the understanding of the built and urban areas; ii) to increase the knowledge about the built environment through the use of more informational media; iii) to collaborate with IT researchers in the development of real VR and AR implementations for the city; iv) to enhance collaboration between education architecture and multimedia students through the use and development of new technologies and processes.
In the book Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine (2007), present a compilation of papers that discuss the mutual transformation that emerging digital technologies and heritage organizations cause on each others due the current trend of combining both. In this line of thinking the research we have been doing contributes to the discussion on the combination between the digital technologies and the elements and places they refer to. Both AR and VR tools have been developed by our team to enhance a better understanding of architecture, namely the cultural heritage, to students and the broad public. All these technologies have been presented in exhibitions on cultural heritage such as the “Escola de Chicago: arranha-céus digitais” exhibition in 2014 at ISCTE-IUL where digital technologies allowed visitors to observe the story of such period in an innovative way. In this exhibition several digital tools developed were presented. Semi-immersive Virtual Reality enabled participants to explore the downtown
city of Chicago by navigating in a 3D model (Coroado, Pedro, D’Alpuim, Eloy, & Dias, 2015). Individual buildings representative of the period, as the Old Colony, were presented with an AR app (ARch) that enables
users to navigate into these buildings using several functionalities as hide/show parts of the building (Mendonça, 2014). Spatial Augmented Reality was used to augment physical models at the scale 1:10 that
were positioned in the exhibition as a complement to the ones digitally presented by AR (Velhinho, 2014).
The mobility and ease of use enabled by the augmented reality apps lead us to continuing using this technology for creating solutions of visualization of cultural information targeting tourists. In this scope we
developed an app to be used for the augmented visualization of paper maps (ARch4maps) (Gaspar et al., 2016). In this case the Lisbon map of the Prémios Valmor was used and the awarded buildings were mapped
by AR in the physical map. SeeARch is a recent AR app developed to be use outside while e.g. a tourist is walking through the city and aims to acquire information on buildings and places. All the developed apps were tested (satisfaction and usability tests) and they use of digital visualization tools proved to be of outmost interest for linking city knowledge and visitors and therefore heritage and cultural tourism.

The paper will discuss how the forces and opportunities of change strongly related to the evolution of computer model-based design and construction are not only driving progress in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) through a transition process but promise to advance the state of the profession through the emergence of completely new paradigms. Computer model-based design and construction will not only deal with the utilization of new tools to improve existing work processes, but with the emergence of completely new ways of doing things which will have to be designed, invented or discovered.
The paper introduces the Digital Reality, The Digital Built Environment and The Digital World concepts and summarizes how we make and use the built, natural and digital environments and how they interrelate. The paper also envisions actions that shall promote the extension of current research contributions by strengthening the overlap of re-search and teaching with computer, social and management sciences in order to address the scientific, engineering, economic, social and political aspects about how we design, build and operate the built, natural and digital environments and how to make their intelligent and sustainable use possible in an integrated comprehensive way.

The use of Information Technology offers the potential for revolutionary change in the effectiveness with which construction-related activities are executed and the value they add to construction industry stakeholders. Several attempts to take advantage of Information Technology in the construction industry are currently being carried out around the world, either at academic or practitioner levels. This paper introduces the concept of MODELLING AND VISUALIZATION OF INFORMATION AND
KNOWLEDGE as a tentative point of departure aiming to bring near and act as a collaborative framework for different research efforts and organizations that currently deal separately with modelling and visualization issues in the construction industry, and contribute in this way to accelerate the transfer and adoption of research results to the construction industry practice.

The Information Visualization Design project is an eight year long, interdisciplinary research effort in expanding the creative boundaries of Architectural Practice. 

As our civilization continues to dive deeper into the information age, making sense of complex data becomes critical.  Information visualization responds to this challenge by using architectural expertise to solve information interpretation problems facing many fields. The result is the design, construction, testing, and deployment of data environments supporting real time decision making in Medical, Finance, Process Control, Live Performance, and Network Monitoring.  These information spaces take advantage of the vast and innate human perceptual abilities in pattern finding. Rigorous scientific testing has demonstrated that ‘dwelling’ in such data architectures allows people to make more accurate, faster, and better decisions while reducing cognitive load and stress.

This work also demonstrates the natural leadership role that architecture may play in interdisciplinary endeavors.  Using core architectural competencies, two architecture faculty became the leaders of a collaborative assembly of five inter-disciplinary teams with over 25 individuals.

The success of this research has been proven by its longevity, over $4.7M in grants, over 50 articles published across four fields, several pending patents, a spin-off company, three commercial licenses, and over 20 live public performances. In recognition of their cutting edge work Julio Bermudez and Jim Agutter have been awarded the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 2004-2005 Creative Achievement Award.  Such accomplishments challenge conventional views of architectural practice and provide students, faculty and practitioners exciting opportunities to create digital information spaces

As we move about the physical world from one environment to another, our experience of what we see is considerably different from that of a scene in a picture. Theories that compare physical space to pictorial space have been debated and revised for centuries, and will continue to do so as long as pictures maintain their cultural pervasiveness. Amidst the vastness of views on picture theory, which has impacted fields ranging from advertising to video game design, there is one area slow to change—architectural visualization. As a genre of visual communication, the products of 3D rendering technology have advanced toward virtuosity in the pursuit of photorealism, becoming a common mode of depicting design intent to stakeholders, however it is under-scrutinized for its improbable stylized imagery and unlikely sociality (or lack thereof). Surprisingly, the practice of visualization art has been relatively unmoved by advancements in environment-behavior research and, instead, preoccupied with technological novelty.

This presentation attempts to address this neglected spot by demonstrating the potential for a new approach to spatial presentation that draws from studies in perceptual psychology,
evolutionary biology, and the neurological mechanisms that underpin art: neuroaesthetics, which suggest that the popular realism of 3D model rendering is not necessarily a requirement for, and may even impede, effective visual comprehension.
This presentation diagrams research from a constellation of fields related to an inherently multidisciplinary area of study and interprets the findings through a series of graphic examples. Research contributions to, and developments regarding, theories of neuroscience of art, perception, and behavioral studies are identified. We then define our concept of a novel methodological approach to presenting space that is evidence-based and imparts meaningful communication to stakeholders about how a proposed environment is designed to fulfill their physical and emotional needs, and out of which a fundamental set of action-based principles emerge. In conclusion, the dissemination of this research serves to intentionally disrupt the status quo—one that relies on representational tropes and dependence on software outcomes, and calls for an alignment instead with the values of contemporary environmental design research.

During the last several years our architecture school has gone through the process of fully digitizing the studios. We, as faculty are learning much about the advantages and difficulties of teaching architectural design in this new electronic environment. This knowledge has been included in our development of a beginning design communications course that offers an important improvement in regards to our changing teaching situation. This short paper presents one project from this course that introduces our students to the use of digital media for dealing with non-visual and subjective content —something quite contrary to what is usually associated with the teaching of digital graphics. We believe that this project breaks new ground for teaching and investigating the nature of computer graphics and through it into the very essence of our experience and understanding of architecture.

An essay on the impact of the rise of digital visualization and public online distribution on urban design and architecture, exampled by the release of eight online digital presentations of the winning designs for the 9/11 memorial for lower Manhattan.  The essay also explores the relationship of presentation techniques of urban architecture, from the Ecole de Beaux Arts and Hugh Ferriss through the English "Townscape" movement.

In this presentation I will present the research developed lately in ISTAR-IUL regarding the use of digital technologies, namely Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) to explore architecture contents, namely the ones focusing cultural tourism, through several perspectives. The goal of this research is to combine knowledge from several disciplines, including History of Architecture and the City, Architecture in the broadest sense, Information and Communication Technologies (with an emphasis on Computer Graphics) and Tourism studies. These fields have been integrated in the development of a common base of information on the architecture of cities. In general, the main goals of our research are: i) to create an information system that allows access to digital information useful for the understanding of the built and urban areas; ii) to increase the knowledge about the built environment through the use of more informational media; iii) to collaborate with IT researchers in the development of real VR and AR implementations for the city; iv) to enhance collaboration between education architecture and multimedia students through the use and development of new technologies and processes. In the book Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine (2007), present a compilation of papers that discuss the mutual transformation that emerging digital technologies and heritage organizations cause on each others due the current trend of combining both. In this line of thinking the research we have been doing contributes to the discussion on the combination between the digital technologies and the elements and places they refer to. Both AR and VR tools have been developed by our team to enhance a better understanding of architecture, namely the cultural heritage, to students and the broad public. All these technologies have been presented in exhibitions on cultural heritage such as the “Escola de Chicago: arranha-céus digitais” exhibition in 2014 at ISCTE-IUL where digital technologies allowed visitors to observe the story of such period in an innovative way. In this exhibition several digital tools developed were presented. Semi-immersive Virtual Reality enabled participants to explore the downtown city of Chicago by navigating in a 3D model (Coroado, Pedro, D’Alpuim, Eloy, & Dias, 2015). Individual buildings representative of the period, as the Old Colony, were presented with an AR app (ARch) that enables users to navigate into these buildings using several functionalities as hide/show parts of the building (Mendonça, 2014). Spatial Augmented Reality was used to augment physical models at the scale 1:10 that were positioned in the exhibition as a complement to the ones digitally presented by AR (Velhinho, 2014). The mobility and ease of use enabled by the augmented reality apps lead us to continuing using this technology for creating solutions of visualization of cultural information targeting tourists. In this scope we developed an app to be used for the augmented visualization of paper maps (ARch4maps) (Gaspar et al., 2016). In this case the Lisbon map of the Prémios Valmor was used and the awarded buildings were mapped by AR in the physical map. SeeARch is a recent AR app developed to be use outside while e.g. a tourist is walking through the city and aims to acquire information on buildings and places. All the developed apps were tested (satisfaction and usability tests) and they use of digital visualization tools proved to be of outmost interest for linking city knowledge and visitors and therefore heritage and cultural tourism.

(Presented at 2013 IDEC Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana)

As a form of visual communication, interior visualization is a widely published, yet under scrutinized, genre. Whether it is referred to as presentation, representational drawing, or interior graphics, the process of visualizing environments would become more meaningful, strategic, and humane if designers were more conscious of how drawings function as a rhetorical structure. Within this structure is the designerʼs opportunity to communicate through a visual eloquence that directs special attention on crafting a message to the intended audience. In this paper we seek an understanding of how environmental visualization functions rhetorically through subtle and implicit strategies for constructing, delineation, and rendering.

Clive Ashwin wrote on the topic of design drawing: “Designers of buildings and interiors are simultaneously engaged in communicating the specific facts of a scheme and persuading clients and colleagues of the quality and attractiveness of their proposals, thereby creating a response favorable to acceptance.” (1984, p. 49). The persuasive function of presentation drawing is discussed to a far lesser degree compared to the highly referential code (or, “the facts”) of construction and perspective drawing, as evidenced by countless texts on tools, technique, and software, whereas only relatively few articles exist on their rhetorical nature. Ashwinʼs observation and further writing raises some fundamental questions: how do drawings such as a plan or perspective operate to influence rhetorically? What principles are employed, often intuitively, within the construction and design of presentation drawing that engage the spectator and hold their gaze—despite remaining a faithful representation of the environment to come?

In this paper we consider these questions and find that design drawing is a non-obvious kind of rhetorical image in that even construction drawings, sober and impartial as they may seem, are subject to the same automatic visual analysis processes by the viewer as that of any magazine advertisement. Although the extent of such rhetorical imagery is vast, this study seeks to identify a basic suite of common representational strategies that drawings often employ that shape a viewerʼs perception about the depiction of a proposed environment such as point of viewer, sociality, movement, grouping, framing, selective rendering, and illumination. These strategies are visual rhetorical devices that combine to convey a persuasive argument analogous to such constructs in verbal rhetoric. We present a matrix with illustrations that demonstrate their conative function, with supporting evidence culled from visual culture and fine arts.

Apart from progress made in graphic design, the larger field of design has no unified theory of rhetoric (Buchanan, 1985), much less in the area of environmental visualization. This research serves to further inquiry and open up the potential for rhetoric and environmental visualization by treating presentation drawing as a designed artifact in its own right and a locus of research into its essential nature.

References (APA)
Ashwin, C. (1984). Drawing, Design, and Semiotics. Design Issues 1 (2), 42-52.
Buchanan, R. (1985). Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice Design Issues 2 (1), 4-22.

Although in the wake of the tradition of photomontage and collage, the com- munication Alberto Campo Baeza and Raphaël Gabrion adopted to present their architectural proposal for a new facility building for the Louvre in Liévin demonstrates an innovative connota- tive power of intertextual elements add-
ed to the basic renderings. In particular, artworks and cinema-referred elements added to the perspective renderings are used to unfold their semantic range, to orient the reception and to discuss on the threshold between fictive and scien- tific, where forgery can be paradoxically used to tell the truth.

Architect professional figure and skills have undergone innumerable evolutions throughout human history, and although the architect's task is always substantially to design buildings and spaces, the use of digital tools has undoubtedly marked the greatest change in architectural design since the Renaissance, if not since the time of Vitruvius. However, when we talk about the relationship between architecture and digital tools, we immediately think about projects of some contemporary architects and researches of some important academics come to mind. Digital tools are now everywhere within the fragmented world of architecture: from multinationals firm with offices in the major cities of the world to small provincial studios, it is difficult if not impossible to find a “non-digital” designer. The massive diffusion of digital technology has radically changed the architectural process in the last 30 years: from concept to representation, 3D modeling through CAD software up to the production of BIM models. For each of these purposes, there are now tools, made by international software houses, or by architects through programming languages, with the aim of facilitating and speeding up their work. The knowledge of certain software has become a fundamental requirement for professional practice so that it seems in place a further differentiation of roles within architectural firms. With this article we aim to understand trends in the dissemination of software among architects, not only inside the major Architectural firms but from the whole fragmented world of architecture, exploiting the records of Google searches, analyzed through the Google Trends platform.

Auf dem Titelblatt des monatlich erscheinenden Reisemagazins Merian war im November 2008 zum Thema Hamburg ein fotorealistisches Rendering2 ⇾ A1=B2/s. Bildteil der zukünftigen Eibphilharmonie3 abgebildet. Auf Initiative eines privaten Projektentwicklers4 präsentierte das Architekturbüro Herzog & de Meuron im Jahr 2003 seinen Entwurf der Öffentlichkeit. Mit der über 100 m hohen „gläsernen Riesenwelle“5 verspricht sich die Stadt Hamburg nicht nur ein neues, spektakuläres Konzerthaus, sondern gleichzeitig eine architektonische Pilgerstätte, die Besucher an die westliche Spitze des Stadtentwicklungsprojekts „HafenCity“ locken soll. Eine eigens gegründete Stiftung initiierte 2005 eine umfangreiche Werbekampagne, die mit dem Slogan „Hamburg baut ein Wahrzeichen“6 zur finanziellen Beteiligung an den Baukosten des Prestigevorhabens aufforderte. Mit der Initiative konnten mehr als 7000 Personen7 gewonnen werden, die über 76 Millionen Euro8 spendeten und stifteten. Die anfangs kalkulierte Bausumme von 196 Millionen Euro9 und der anvisierte Start der Spielsaison im Herbst 2009 wurden jedoch mehrfach revidiert. Mit November 2008 belaufen sich die Gesamtbaukosten schon auf 500 Millionen Euro, davon müssen Hamburgs Steuerzahler einen Anteil von 323 Millionen Euro aufbringen.10 Bis zur geplanten Eröffnung der Eibphilharmonie im Mai 201211 sollen die verführerischen Renderings Investoren, Politiker und Steuerzahler fast zehn Jahre lang bei Laune halten. Mit digital simulierten Visualisierungen des Architekturentwurfs wird auf Flyern, Informationsbroschüren, Posters und Post- bzw. Klappkarten, ergänzt um ein Buch zur Geschichte des Projekts Eibphilharmonie,12 für das neue visionäre Bild Hamburgs geworben.