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, that 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 interior design freshmasonry Gabriel. Using the professional software ‘Unity’, Gabriel learned to present his project in the format of VR.

Gabriel’s design is conceived as and intended to be a building to accommodate the staff of the Chinese embassy in Santiago, Chile. The concept revolves around cultural migration and is inspired by the ‘Da Zha Yuan’, a building style derived from the traditional ‘Shi He Yuan’ or courtyard house. The design takes a vertical cluster of volumes and spaces, which remind us of a dense urban environment in constant transformation. The massiveness of the structure alludes to the Chinese monumental architecture, and the textural and light qualities also bring a sense of solemnity to the cube.

This project is presented at its conceptual stage as an exploration of spatial relationships derived from the cultural collisions that took place during migration. The virtual environment uses an abstract representation of the city as a series of volumes and open areas are meant to remind visitors of a self-contained city. However, this city has an ambiguous identity, which makes the viewers feel uneasy about navigating through it. Virtual reality is used here to represent the abstract ideas of the design before it materialises. It is a way to provoke imagination in the viewers, allowing them to anticipate the final outcome.

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造性願景的新媒介。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許鈞龍進行了共4小時的密集課程。透過在課程中學習使用專業軟件’Unity’，許同學學習了以虛擬實境格式呈現他的作品。

許同學的設計是一座建築，以容納中國駐智利聖地亞哥大使館的工作人員。這個概念以文化遷移為中心，靈感來自「大雜院」，這是一種源自傳統「四合院」或庭院的建築風格。設計採用垂直的體積和空間集群，讓我們聯想到不斷轉變又密集的城市環境。大規模的結構隱晦地聯繫了中國的紀念性建築，質地和光線的質量也給立方體的建築增添了一份莊嚴感。

該項目在概念階段計劃探索因文化遷移而起的文化碰撞中，結果獲得的空間關係。虛擬的環境透過抽象描繪城市，打造出一系列三維和開放的空間區域，希望提醒到訪的人士，這是一個能夠自給自足的城市。然而，這個城市的身份模糊不清，使得觀眾對探索它感到有些不安。虛擬實境在此情況下用來表示設計實現之前的抽象概念。這是一種激發觀眾想像力的方式，讓他們能夠嘗試預測最終的成品。

Design Graduate:
Hui Kwan Lung, Gabriel

Collaborator:
Unity Future Optimizer (UFO) Company Limited 優孚奧有限公司

Email:
gabyinteriordesign1@gmail.com

School:
Raffles Design Institute (Hong Kong)