Virtual reality is the new inspection and review process for many building projects including corporate offices, medical facilities and senior housing.
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Your office building is being renovated. The colors and lighting seem a bit off.
What to do?
Put on a helmet at your architect's office and take a virtual walk through the entire structure. Try out different colors and windows and see how they look morning, noon and night.
Virtual reality is the new inspection and review process for many building projects including corporate offices, medical facilities and senior housing.
“Very few people buy a car without test driving it first,” said Eric Bell, senior associate for MBH Architecture of West Hartford. “This is the closest we can get to test driving a building or space.
“Before, our clients may have known what they wanted the color of the wall to be,” Bell said. “With VR, they will not only know the color of that wall, but how it looks next to the butt glass wall on top of the stone floor with a white ceiling and large pendant light. This is a far cry from massing models of days past. Understanding the entire built environment becomes a very satisfying and collaborative effort.”
Too busy to come back to the architect's office? No problem, there's an app for that. Clients and design professionals can view changes together through their smartphones.
More businesses are deploying VR technology for a variety of purposes. Municipalities, transportation companies, and energy and telecommunications providers are all prospective VR users. Urban planners and architects can build out near-real-life models and analyze what happens to traffic flows when a new building or neighborhood is constructed.
When virtually touring a building, the uninitiated can be wary of falling off that catwalk or bouncing off a wall. With guidance, however, it's simple: Just point and click and walk up and down stairs and through and around the building, virtually.
Nick Michnevitz III, principal of MBH Architecture, says “the client immediately 'gets it' once they see the model or are physically inserted into the virtual environment.
“This saves an incredible amount of time, uncertainty and perhaps misunderstanding of what is being presented in the design,” Michnevitz said. “This allows fewer changes in construction as well as the potential for a client in the end to say 'Oh, I didn't realize it was going to look or feel like that.' ”
Gone, to a significant degree, are the old, two-dimensional blueprints. The new software allows clients to play a role mapping out the entire project. Besides lighting, color and configuration, clients can strip a building down to mechanical or plumbing systems to see how the new facility will function.
Matthew Tinder, spokesman for the American Institute of Architects in Washington, D.C., called virtual reality an enhancement that is being used nationally with increasing frequency. MBH still needs, however, to produce the actual 2-D construction documents and relay the details to the contractor in order for the building and spaces within to be constructed, according to senior associate Carmelo Ferla.
Virtual tour
MBH staffers recently provided a virtual tour of an old factory building being transformed into a brightly lit space for a high-tech firm. A large skylight overlooks recreational areas big enough for a basketball court with greenery, lounge chairs and tables. Large, brightly colored shipping containers with windows have been transformed to function as individual offices. The offices are spaced around various work, leisure and cafeteria areas.
“When we make changes within our model we can see the changes be instantly updated within our virtual environment,” said Nick Alter, building information modeling manager for MBH, who creates and maintains the computer models.
The front-line architects seem to be having a good time in the process.
“For a design firm, [3-D] renderings can be an even cooler tool than professionally taken photographs, since the latter only become available once construction is complete,” said Agustina Lasala-Ruffo, also a senior associate for MBH Architecture. “Renderings become an invaluable tool for those projects that extend for various months, or even years.”
Lasala-Ruffo said the 3-D modeling software provides “a real-time visual of the positioning of the sun upon the designed exterior and/or interior environment, allowing further understanding of daylighting and shadow casting effects.”
John Tindall-Gibson, a former school superintendent, now works as a “learning environment planner” for architects Drummey Rosanne Anderson of South Windsor. Tindall-Gibson is keen on how VR is changing the industry.
“Years ago, when I taught a community college course in 'blueprint reading,' the biggest challenge was teaching adults how to visualize in three dimensions the lines, text and symbols that appeared two-dimensionally on paper,” Tindall-Gibson said. “It was a difficult thing for many people to do. It is a learned skill that improves with years of experience. Virtual reality programs in architecture take that problem away.”
To take a virtual tour of an office building designed by MBH Architecture go to HartfordBusiness.com.
