Project Description

Beyond Three Dimensions | 跨越三維空間

Description:

Virtual Reality (VR) technologies bring great advantages as a transferable skill to designers, they are also a new medium to communicate concepts and realise creative visions. Viewing a design in VR requires the audience to put on a 3D display headset that completely covers one’s field of vision to create a sense of ‘immersion’. The visuals will appear highly realistic, as if putting the audience in a ‘first-person’ view situated at the building site.

Apart from the sense of depth, it further mimics the senses of light, texture and scale, which would otherwise be impossible to replicate with traditional plan drawings and 3D renderings. This breaks the communication barrier between visually proficient designers and result-driven clients (who is often less proficient in visual imagination), and encourages more collaboration between the two.

As a collaborator in「DesignXcel」with first-hand knowledge in VR, UFO conducted a 4-hour intensive course with architectural design freshmasonries Carol Ng and Mono Tung. Using the professional software ‘Unity’, they would learn to present their university projects in VR format.

Carol’s project ‘The Hidden Architecture’ involves a matrix of underground space beneath King George V Memorial Park, Sai Ying Pun. She further highlighted its distinct physical properties. For example, the temperature inside the tunnel stays around 16-18°C throughout the year. Since the tunnel does not receive any natural sunlight from above, people who stay in the tunnel would not have a sense of time. With limited visual connection to the surrounding cityscape, people eventually also lose their sense of direction in the grid-form tunnel. However, the underground space allows them to be released from the reliance on visual senses. In the confined underground space, the quietness, feeling of darkness and other non-visual senses take over to give the audience a unique sensory experience.

Mono’s project ‘Revisit Michael Webb The Cushicle & Suitaloon With Material Research On Silicone – Pneumatic Structure Supported With Air & Silicone Module’ explores the possibility of using the materiality of silicone as a viable architectural material. Utilising the softness and elasticity of silicone, he proposed to build a network of pneumatic structures that are programmable and reactable to the environments. His work is inspired by the architect group ‘Utopie’, which was established in France during the 1960’s as an avant-garde architectural movement. The inspiration led to Mono’s bold and surreal proposal of a dynamic architecture.
Both Carol and Mono’s projects involved highly innovative solutions that have no clear reference in existing designs. Thankfully with VR, they were able to put potential clients/ audiences directly into the virtual environment, allowing them to have immediate sensation of the space. As time progresses, the technology of VR will only improve to accomodate a more truthful experience in virtuality, extending further into mimicking other senses.

虛擬實境(VR)作為一種可以移轉至不同領域的技術，能夠為設計師帶來巨大優勢之餘，同時亦是傳達概念和實現創新願景的新媒介。在虛擬實境中觀看設計作品時，觀眾需要戴上完全覆蓋視野的頭戴式3D顯示器，以營造「沉浸感」。當刻的視覺效果對觀眾而言非常逼真，就好比讓觀眾置身於建築工地的「第一人稱」視圖中一樣。

除了呈現深度感之外，此項技術進一步摹擬了光線、質感和比例的神髓，否則將無法用傳統的平面圖和3D效果圖進行複制。這打破了在視覺藝術方面熟練的設計師和受結果驅動的客戶（他們通常對視覺想像不太熟悉）之間的溝通隔閡，並鼓勵兩者之間更頻繁的合作。

作為擁有虛擬實境第一手知識的《設計列陣》合作夥伴，優孚奧學校為專攻室內設計的設計新鮮人吳嘉琳和童昭安進行了4小時的密集課程。透過在課程中學習使用專業軟件「Unity」，他們學習了以虛擬實境格式呈現他的作品。

吳同學的項目「The Hidden Architecture」包含了西營盤國王喬治五世紀念公園下的地下空間。在作品中，她進一步強調了其獨特的物理特性。例如，隧道內的溫度全年保持在16-18°C左右。由於隧道沒有從上方接收任何自然光，隧道中的人將沒有時間感。由於與周圍城市景觀的視覺聯繫有限，人們最終也失去了在網格形隧道中的方向感。然而，地下空間使他們不再依賴視覺感官。狹窄的地下空間安靜而黑暗，知覺由其他非視覺感官接管，這為觀眾帶來獨特的感官體驗。

童同學的項目「由空氣和矽膠模塊製成的空氣支撐結構」探討了使用有機矽材料作為建築材料的可能性。他利用矽膠的柔軟性和彈性，提出建立一個可編程而且可對環境產生反應的充氣結構網絡。他的作品受了建築師團體「Utopie」的啟發，該團體於1960年代在法國成立，是一個前衛的建築運動。靈感促使了童同學就動態架構提出大膽而超現實的提議。

吳同學和童同學的項目都包含了高度創新的方案，這些方案在現有設計作品中沒有明確的參考對象。值得慶幸的是，他們能夠將潛在的客戶/受眾直接置於虛擬環境中，讓他們立即感受到這個環境的氛圍。隨著時間推移，VR的技術只會繼續進步，以創造更真實的虛擬體驗，並進一步擴展到模仿其他感官。

Design Graduate:
NG Ka Lam, Carol
TUNG Chiu On, Mono

Collaborator:
Unity Future Optimizer (UFO) Company Limited | 優孚奧學校

Email:
carolngkl.hk@gmail.com
c.tung@hotmail.co.uk

School:
The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture 香港大學建築學院