From Virtual Landscapes, Spatial perception and other stories between here and there

Think of the city and all material around as a post-natural ‘augmented reality’, describing an overlap and constructed perception of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are supplemented by computational automation and digital sensory input. This environment creates immersive experiences and information empowerment of the individual alongside the potential for intrinsic top-down control mechanisms for our hybrid civic environments. The history of such spaces ranges from the baroque (constructed singular central viewing position, early panoramas, etc); modern cinematic constructs; and today’s sublime laser-point cloud scans and participatory MMORPG ego shooter games in social networks. It is here, within these postmodern digital simulacra where everybody has become part of Borges’ fable of the map that supersedes reality, where we exist and pose the hypothesis of an augmented architecture as an all-encompassing interior state, feedback controlled and choreographed as a scripted environment.

Over the past three years, I have worked on defining a contemporary architectural response to today's environment dominated by the non-physical, the ephemeral data streams and the virtual super-saturation of augmented reality. Our studio takes the form of experimentation, critique and design, surrounding the polemical ideas of prototypes of the Informational Revolution. Here, we speculate and draw out questions about architecture’s relevance as a catalysing force on our evolved digital culture. In this mixed reality we inhabit, we design spatial interfaces between the virtual and actual – exuberant augmentations. We believe that today’s shift in technological perception entices a shift in the architectural profession. If ignored, this re-articulation will render us bystanders into the most important evolution in spatial design since the development of the central perspective in renaissance times.