Projections of Reality engages in augmenting design processes involving physical models with real time spatial analysis. The work was initiated at smartgeometry'13 at UCL London in April 2013 and is currently continued at ETH Zurich’s Value Lab Asia in Singapore.

The work explores techniques of real time spatial analysis of architectural and urban design models: how physical models can be augmented with real-time 3D capture and analysis, enabling the architect to interact with the physical model whilst obtaining feedback from a computational analysis. We investigate possible workflows that close the cycle of designing and model making, analysing the design and feeding results back into the design cycle by projecting them back onto the physical model.

On a technical level, we are addressing the challenge of dealing with complex, unstructured data from real time scanning, e.g. a point cloud, which needs processing before it can be used in urban analysis. We will investigate strategies to extract information of the urban form targeted for design processes, using real time scanning devices (Microsoft Kinect, hand held laser scanners, etc.), open source 3D reconstruction software (reconstructMeQT) and post-processing of the input through parametric modelling (e.g. Processing, Rhino scripting, Generative Components).

The goal of the workshop at smartgeometry'13 was to create a working prototype of a physical urban model that is augmented with real-time analysis. We worked with the cluster participants to formulate a design concept of the prototype and to break down the challenge into individual modules, e.g. analysing and cleaning the geometry, algorithms for real time analysis, projecting imagery onto the physical model.

Cluster Champions: Stefan Arisona, Eva Friedrich, Bruno Moser, Dominik Nüssen, Lukas Treyer
Cluster Participants: Piotr Baszynski, Moritz Cramer, Peter Ferguson, Rich Maddock, Teruyuki Nomura, Jessica In, Graham Shawcross, Reeti Sompura, Tsung-Hsien Wang
Year: 2013

Good news to start the year with: Our cluster proposal “Projections of Reality” has been accepted for this year’s smartgeometry at The Bartlett of UCL from 15 - 20 April 2013 in London.

Cluster gurus: Stefan Arisona, Eva Friedrich, Bruno Moser, Dominik Nuessen, Lukas Treyer.

Projections of reality will engage in augmenting design processes involving physical models with real time spatial analysis.

The cluster will explore techniques of real time spatial analysis of architectural and urban design models: how physical models can be augmented with real-time 3D capture and analysis, enabling the architect to interact with the physical model whilst obtaining feedback from a computational analysis. We will investigate possible workflows that close the cycle of designing and model making, analysing the design and feeding results back into the design cycle by projecting them back onto the physical model.

On a technical level, we are addressing the challenge of dealing with complex, unstructured data from real time scanning, e.g. a point cloud, which needs processing before it can be used in urban analysis. We will investigate strategies to extract information of the urban form targeted for design processes, using real time scanning devices (Microsoft Kinect, hand held laser scanners, etc.), open source 3D reconstruction software (reconstructMeQT) and post-processing of the input through parametric modelling (e.g. Processing, Rhino scripting, Generative Components).

The goal of the workshop will be to create a working prototype of a physical urban model that is augmented with real- time analysis. We will work with the cluster participants to formulate a design concept of the prototype and to break down the challenge into individual modules, e.g. analysing and cleaning the geometry, algorithms for real time analysis, projecting imagery onto the physical model.

Workshop applications are now open - check out these links for further information:

smartgeometry @ web: https://smartgeometry.org smartgeometry @ facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Smartgeometry

Edited by Stefan Arisona, Gideon Aschwanden, Jan Halatsch, and Peter Wonka, 2012

About this Book

This book is thematically positioned at the intersections of Urban Design, Architecture, Civil Engineering and Computer Science, and it has the goal to provide specialists coming from respective fields a multi-angle overview of state-of-the-art work currently being carried out. It addresses both newcomers who wish to obtain more knowledge about this growing area of interest, as well as established researchers and practitioners who want to keep up to date. In terms of organization, the volume starts out with chapters looking at the domain at a wide-angle and then moves focus towards technical viewpoints and approaches. (Excerpt from preface by Stefan Arisona).

Contents

Part I: Introduction

1. A Planning Environment for the Design of Future Cities - Gerhard Schmitt

2. Calculating Cities - Bharat Dave

3. The City as a Socio-technical System: A Spatial Reformulation in the Light of the Levels Problem and the Parallel Problem - Bill Hillier

4. Technology-Augmented Changes in the Design and Delivery of the Built Environment - Martin Riese

Part II: Parametric Models and Information Modeling

5. City Induction: A Model for Formulating, Generating, and Evaluating Urban Designs - José P. Duarte, José N. Beirão, Nuno Montenegro, and Jorge Gil

6. Sortal Grammars for Urban Design: A Sortal Approach to Urban Data Modeling and Generation - Rudi Stouffs, José N. Beirão, and José P. Duarte

7. Sort Machines - Thomas Grasl and Athanassios Economou

8. Modeling Water Use for Sustainable Urban Design - Ramesh Krishnamurti, Tajin Biswas, and Tsung-Hsien Wang

Part III: Behavior Modeling and Simulation

9. Simulation Heuristics for Urban Design - Christian Derix, Åsmund Gamlesæter, Pablo Miranda, Lucy Helme, and Karl Kropf

10. Running Urban Microsimulations Consistently with Real-World Data - Gunnar Flötteröod and Michel Bierlaire

11. Urban Energy Flow Modelling: A Data-Aware Approach - Diane Perez and Darren Robinson

12. Interactive Large-Scale Crowd Simulation - Dinesh Manocha and Ming C. Lin

13. An Information Theoretical Approach to Crowd Simulation - Cagatay Turkay, Emre Koc, and Selim Balcisoy

14. Integrating Urban Simulation and Visualization - Daniel G. Aliaga

Part IV: Visualization, Collaboration and Interaction

15. Visualization and Decision Support Tools in Urban Planning - Antje Kunze, Remo Burkhard, Serge Gebhardt, and Bige Tuncer

16. Spatiotemporal Visualisation: A Survey and Outlook - Chen Zhong, Tao Wang, Wei Zeng, and Stefan Arisona

17. Multi-touch Wall Displays for Informational and Interactive Collaborative Space - Ian Vince McLoughlin, Li Ming Ang, and Wooi Boon Goh

18. Testing Guide Signs’ Visibility for Pedestrians in Motion by an Immersive Visual Simulation System - Ryuzo Ohno and Yohei Wada

Publication Information

Publisher: Springer, Berlin Heidelberg
Series: Communications in Computer and Information Science, Vol. 242
Editors: Arisona, S.; Aschwanden, G.; Halatsch, J.; Wonka, P.
Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-3-642-29757-1
Link: https://www.springeronline.com/978-3-642-29757-1

The Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC) in Singapore was established as a collaboration between the National Research Foundation of Singapore and ETH Zurich in 2010. It is an institution that frames a number of research programmes, the first of which is the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL). The SEC strengthens the capacity of Singapore and Switzerland to research, understand and actively respond to the challenges of global environmental sustainability. It is motivated by an aspiration to realise the highest potentials for present and future societies. SEC serves as an intellectual hub for research, scholarship, entrepreneurship, postgraduate and postdoctoral training. It actively collaborates with local universities and research institutes and engages researchers with industry to facilitate technology transfer for the benefit of the public.

https://www.futurecities.ethz.ch/

I have been involved in Future Cities Laboratory since my return from UCSB in October 2008, and was the second PI to move to Singapore in October 2010, at that time located at temporary offices at the NUS School of Design and Environment. Main tasks included general ramp up of the centre, establishing technical infrastructure, hiring and supervision of PhD students. In January 2012, SEC moved into its permanent offices at the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE). I was responsible for the design and implementation of the [[ValueLabAsia |Value Lab Asia]], which was built in only three months and has been in operation since March 2012.

The Simulation Platform Research Module (“Module IX”): Service and Research for Future Planning Environments

Informing design and decision-making processes with new techniques and approaches to data acquisition, information visualisation and simulation for urban sustainability.

In science, simulations have assumed a critical role in mediating between theory and practical experiment. In architecture, simulations increasingly function in a similar way to help integrate the design, construction, and lifecycle management of buildings. And in urban planning, simulations have become an indispensable method for generating and analysing design and planning scenarios. The growing importance of simulation for these fields has been stimulated by a rapid growth in the availability of urban-related data. Despite this, most current simulations are capable of capturing and activating only a small fraction of the available data. Addressing this lack is both a matter of generating appropriate computer power to process the vast bodies of data, and accessing the data itself that is often held in hard to access databases. To contemplate possible advanced urban planning techniques that activate live and dynamic data, demonstrates that existing tools, such as GIS, are ill equipped to exploit the analytical and communicative potentials of this growing volume of urban data.

The Simulation Platform examines how to effectively deal with the growing volume of urban-related data. It investigates new techniques and instruments for the acquisition, organisation, retrieval, interaction, and visualisation of such data. It will propose techniques for designers, decision-makers and stakeholders to access necessary data about the city in innovative and dynamic ways. It does in two ways. First, it supports other research modules in the Future Cities Laboratory by supplying services such as data acquisition methods and visualisation facilities. Second, building on these services it will conduct original research on advanced and dynamic modelling, visualisation and simulation techniques that aim to better understand and intervene in the complex processes that shape contemporary cities.

Module Leader & PI: Prof Dr Gerhard Schmitt
Module Coordinator & PI: Assoc Prof (Adj) Dr Stefan Arisona
PIs: Prof Dr Armin Grün, Prof Dr Ludger Hovestadt, Prof Dr Ian Smith
Affiliated Faculty: Assoc Prof Dr Tat Jen Cham (NTU), Assoc Prof Dr Chandra Sekhar (NUS), Assoc Prof Dr Ian McLoughlin (NTU), Asst Prof Dr Philip Chi-Wing Fu, Asst Prof Dr Benny Raphael (NUS), Prof Dr Luc Van Gool (ETH Zurich), Asst Prof Dr Jianxin Wu (NTU)
PostDocs: Dr Matthias Berger, Dr Xianfeng Huang, Dr Tao Wang
PhD Students: Gideon Aschwanden, Dengxin Dai, Eva Friedrich, Vahid Moosavi, Maria Papadopoulou, Rongjun Qin, Dongyoun Shin, Sing Kuang Tan, Didier Vernay, Wei Zeng, Chen Zhong
IT Engineers: Daniel Sin, Chan Lwin

ArcGIS CityEngine, is a 3D modeling software application developed by Esri R&D Center Zurich (formerly Procedural Inc.) and is specialized in the generation of three dimensional urban environments. With the procedural modeling approach, CityEngine enables the efficient creation of detailed large-scale 3D city models with merely a few clicks of the mouse instead of the time exhaustive & work intensive method of object creation & manual placement. CityEngine works with architectural object placement & arrangement in the same manner that VUE manages terrain, ecosystems & atmosphere mapping & is equally as diverse in its ability of object manipulation & environmantal conformity/harmony as its VUE counterpart. The recent acquisition of CityEngine by Esri is aiming to push the innovations in 3D GIS and Geodesign technology (from Wikipedia).

In 2008 I joined the ETH Zurich spin-off company Procedural Inc. as a software architect, and worked the general CityEngine software design, the real-time rendering core, and interactive 3D editing features.

CityEngine was quickly adopted by big players in different industry areas where fast 3D digital content creation is needed. Some examples are:

• Film: DreamWorks, Pixar, Weta Digital, Mr. X Inc., Fold7.
• Gaming: Blizzard Entertainment, Rockstar Games, Square Enix, THQ, Grasshopper Manufacture.
• Architecture and Urban Planning: Foster+Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, SOM, Coop Himmelb(l)au.
• Government: Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority, Brisbane City.
• Education: MIT, Stanford University, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, ETH Zurich, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.
• Others: Microsoft, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung.

More information: https://www.esri.com/software/cityengine

Company: Procedural Inc.
Position: Software Architect
Period: 2008 - 2011