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From the place of research to the research of place: new digital technologies for
simulating future architectures in building environments

Conference Paper · June 2010

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From the place of research
to the research of place:
new digital technologies
for simulating future
architectures in building
environments
Roberta Spallone,
Politecnico di Torino, I Faculty of Architecture, Dept. of
Human Settlements Science and Technology Torino,
Italy
Massimiliano LoTurco,
Politecnico di Torino, I Faculty of Engineering, Dept. of
Building Engineering and Territorial Systems Torino,
Italy
and Marco Sanna,
Politecnico di Torino, I Faculty of Engineering, Dept. of
Building Engineering and Territorial Systems Torino,
Italy
ABSTRACT: New digital technologies offer some
powerful tools for evaluating the impact that future
architectures could have in existing settings.
Historically established techniques like coloured hand
drawing perspectives and photomontages have been
superseded by digitally based static and dynamic
representations which blend virtual models with
photographs and videos. Besides some new techniques,
that offer different levels of interactivity and immersivity,
like navigation through virtual models and augmented
reality, still have to fully demonstrate their undoubted
potentiality in this field.
In the most of West towns, some projectual themes, like
reconstruction of empty spaces inside historical
centres and rehabilitation of abandoned industrial areas
inside urban settlements, seem to need new
methodologies and tolls for checking design proposals
which could have, as frequently have had in the recent
past, disastrous impacts on the image of the city. These
themes today strongly involve architects in their
professional works and students in their learning activities.
In this paper we would like to present the results of our
research and related didactic activity, about digital
representation techniques for simulating future
architectures in building environments.
Two principal aims address our research. The first one is to
propose future developments of low cost devices useful
both to professionals and students for checking the effects
of their design ideas. The second one is to provide our
present students with some critical and operative tools in
order to give them the whole control of their projectual
proposals towards the surroundings.
Anticipating future developments, we can foresee the
implementation of 4D interactive and immersive
representations in simulating future architectures in their
context.
Conference theme: Design research
Keywords Digital, Modelling, Representation, Design,
Research
INTRODUCTION
I often say that design comes from the
professional tradition and the disciplinary
rules, but only the encounter against the
site gives concreteness to design.
(Gregotti 1986: 151)
The relevance of representation tools in the prefiguration of
relationships between future architectures and existent
environment was deeply felt by architects since the origin,
if we accept the interpretation, given by Mario Docci, of the
term scaenographia in Vitruvio’s treatise, whose meaning
could be “perhaps a promenade architecturale ante
litteram, solved thanks to the graphic simulation which
offers a wide-ranging vision”. (Docci 1997: XII)
While contemporary architectural culture, as in the words of
Gregotti, underlines the role of the site in every design
process, architectural practice of last decades was
characterized by realizations not ever careful to the
peculiarities of site.
This has had dramatic consequences in the most of West
towns, in which the main projectual themes are the
reconstruction of empty spaces inside historical centres
and the rehabilitation of abandoned industrial areas inside
urban settlements.
Digital representation today develops overall techniques
and tools aimed to communicating architectural designs
when it is completely defined.
On the contrary we believe that new digital representation
technologies and tools, today in use and new low cost
devices of future development, could offer innovative
methods for checking design proposals in their
relationships with the environment, recognizing the values
of the existents.
Figure 1: Mies van der Rohe, collage-montage
of a concert hall, 1942.
1. SIMULATING FUTURE
ARCHITECTURES IN BUILDING
ENVIRONMENTS SINCE THE ANALOG
ERA UNTIL THE DIGITAL ERA
Hand drawing perspectives, rendered with different
techniques, and photomontages were used in the past
since today for evaluating and communicating the project in
the existing context.
While thorough perspective drawings, often coloured, were
more frequently drawn by illustrators than by architects and
realized primarily to communicate the design idea to clients
or juries, photomontages can be realized directly by
architects when they were imaging new buildings and
evaluating different solutions referred to the existent
settings. In this case some architects painted their
concepts directly on the photograph or applied the collage-
montage technique (Fig.1).
In the composition of perspective drawing the drawer
chose eye-level viewpoint for showing the perceptive
effects of proportional relationships between new buildings
and existent ones or aerial viewpoints for representing
large urban areas in which was foreseen a requalification
intervention. The level of detail depended on the drawing
scale and on the distance between viewpoint and object.
Textures and/or colours contributed to the truth likeness of
these kinds of rendering, suggesting the presence of lights
and materials.
Realizing photomontages, the camera viewpoint had
generally a human-eye height, while the inserted design
drafting was obviously less detailed than the photograph
with resulting major abstraction effect.
Figure 2: Studio Baietto Battiato Bianco, digital
rendering of rehabilitation proposal of “Officine
Grandi Riparazioni (OGR)” in Turin, 2003.
The complexity in creating these images has often to face
a separation of jobs and responsibilities between
architectural atelier and rendering studio. For this reason
they are essentially produced for communicating and
publishing the project.
But 3D modelling fully demonstrates its capabilities about
the control of relationship between existent and new
settlements, when it is worked out inside the atelier,
following the whole design process. For example, during
the buildings shaping phase, volumetric 3D models of
existing townscape could be created with the aim to insert
alternative architectural proposals and evaluate the
proportional ratios, the effects of the shadows cast by a
new structure on the surrounding area during the year, the
visual effects coming from the existent approach roads.
Going on in defining design proposal, 3D models could be
sharpen adding the details which allow to compare the
façade rhythm of new and old buildings, and then, applying
lights and materials, chromatic and texture effects (Fig.2).
This practice, which needs to spend lot of time principally in
modelling works, in comparison with hand drawing
rendering, offers the opportunity to set infinite views and to
try infinite design alternatives. Besides it could be the basis
for producing movies, and creating interactive and
immersive experience, as we will see below.
2. FROM 3D TO 4D MODELLING:
DIGITAL REPRESENTATION FOR
CHECKING AND COMMUNICATING
DESIGN PROPOSALS
Today the montage of rendered model of new buildings
inside a photograph of existing context has principally a
communicative aim: it is requested both in architectural
competitions and in building permits, and it is one of the
most diffuse medium in architectural magazines. Digital
photomontage implies some problems, similar to these of
traditional photomontage, in respect to the models detail,
which has to be enhanced to the photographs level, to the
lightening, which has to be calibrated on the natural light in
the moment and climate condition of snapshoot, to the
viewpoint, which has to reproduce the same of the camera.
The renderings presented (Fig.2-3), assumed as case
studies, show different capabilities of static digital
representation for simulating future architectures in building
environments.
The rendering in figure 2 illustrates the rehabilitation
proposal of “Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR)” in Turin
designed by Studio Baietto Battiato Bianco (2003). It
consists in an intervention of refurbishment of a 19th
century Rail Plants of singular architectural value to new
exhibition areas and headquarter of Urban Center.
In the image, representing a new coffee restaurant in the
building of Urban Center, the designers chose to model the
plant interiors characterized by a modular structure of steel
pillars and trusses, attributing to them the same level of
detail of new intervention. The viewpoint is set in order to
emphasize the new internal façade and the horizon line
corresponds to the level of new façade’s windows. This
façade is characterized by the alternation between
translucent surfaces, which reflect the opposite ancient
façade, and transparent surfaces, which allow to see the
designed interiors. The technique selected, of whole
modelling, although requests times for modelling the
context, offers the vantage to automatically calculate
reflections and refractions.
Figure 3: Jean Nouvel, photo inserted
rendering for “One New Change”, 2003.
The photo inserted rendering in figure 3 shows Jean
Nouvel’s design for “One New Change”, a redevelopment
intervention close to St Paul’s Cathedral (2003),
characterized by retails and offices faced on a pedestrian
road along an axis aligned with the historical monument.
As Jean Nouvel affirms, “the design of One New Change is
about enriching the city with a new sort of modernity, one
that reaches beyond itself to speak, to contemplate and to
reveal the diverse character of its surroundings”. In figure
3, the building volume creates an outdoor glazed courtyard
that looks to the cathedral, functioning as theatrical
settings, and reflects the life along the road. This image,
reproducing a eye-view central perspective, is realized by
the montage of the rendered model on the background of
St Paul’s photo, then post produced with the addition of
people.
3D digital modelling adds, as a specific prerogative, the
possibility to enter the fourth dimension, which represents
an innovative toll, used since about 10 years for simulating
future architectures in building environments.
This important aspect is underlined by Moriconi, who
observes that “with the digital support the drawing
simulates the hypothetical reality, overcomes static
limitations and allows interacting with any kind of sign. By
creating virtual images, digital graphics is probably the
most suitable tool to interpret the complexity of reality”.
(Moriconi 2001:22)
We can identify different production techniques for realizing
these kinds of architectural videos:
- compositing different 2D images, mixed with rendered 3D
models, photographs and texts, using stop motion
technique, thanks to post-production software,
- modelling the new buildings and the existing environment,
then setting the virtual camera path and rendering,
- modelling the new buildings and inserting it into real
environment using camera tracking technique.
Beside the representation techniques vary depending on
the different aspects of knowledge they want underline and
the different messages they want convey.
In comparison with static renders, the present limit of these
media, assumed the long times of their production, consists
in the fact that they are worked only in the communication
phase. On the contrary, they could be useful also in the
concept phase for checking the perceptive effects on a
moving visitors, perhaps in a Gooch shading model.
Three architectural movies, selected as case studies, show
some of these different communication styles.
The film commissioned by Bradford Centre Regeneration
to Squint/Opera presents the realization of Alsop’s 2003
Masterplan (Fig.4).
Figure 4: Alsop architects, film for Bradford
Centre Regeneration Masterplan, produced by
Squint/Opera, 2003.
The Masterplan consists in a 15-year city regeneration
project and focuses on developing four new
neighbourhoods. As the city’s website says: “It is both
radical and far reaching. Its aim is to reposition and reveal
Bradford, by opening up its hidden views, historic
architecture and buried watercourses. Based on a unique
‘park in the city’ concept, this vision for Bradford will
change people’s perceptions of living, working and playing
in the city centre”.
(http://www.bradfordnewcity.com/default.asp?Page=16)
Alsop's work with the Bradford Centre Regeneration team
creates an opportunity to let Bradford breathe with quality
open space that optimises Bradford's existing fine qualities,
views and built inheritance. About the scheme, Will Alsop
states that “Bradford has the topography to allow every
citizen to wake up to a view - both physical and mental.
Their collective ambition can create a placed of
extraordinary difference”.
(http://www.alsoparchitects.com/).
The film starts individuating four squared sectors inside
Bradford’s city centre, in which the project will be
developed. The peculiarities and the values of the
settlement and the multiethnic society who lives there, are
showed by a series of photos, sometimes collaged with
sketches and texts. The accelerate montage, frame by
frame, contributes to give the idea of a frenetic life. Some
monuments like the city-hall, the cathedral, the mosque
and very numerous listed buildings confer to the city centre
a historical connotation, but some other derelict buildings,
ancient and recent, prestigious and ordinary, some roads
and traffics besiege the city. The solution to this problem
could be the demolition of some concrete buildings, which
is simulated by their animated elimination inserted in the
images of existing context.
Figure 5: 3XN architects, video for
architectural competition for the Students
Union at The London School of Economics,
produced by Cadpeople 2009.
In this way many areas could be available for new
interventions in which the green flows like lava on the
asphalt.
Created the new park, which works as a connective tissue,
architectures, infrastructures and amenities complete the
Masterplan. Views and site lines are as important as actual
new structures. Many of these spaces already exist and
are just hidden.
The narrative construction clearly highlights problems and
solutions confirming its communicative efficacy.
The video of Rex’s proposal for Museum plaza, a riverfront
cultural centre in Louisville (Kentucky), realized by
Brooklinfoundry in 2006, shows the design of a gigantic
business-culture complex destined to transform the skyline
of downtown. The movie maker describes the project: “This
57-story robot-like shaped building is structured by a
massive box dubbed the "Island" which is poised above the
ground and has three towers, and four supporting legs”.
(http://www.brooklynfoundry.com/#/museumplaza)
Challenging the preconceptions of an urban development
this multi use structure aims to revitalizing the downtown
district while giving the city a new iconic landmark, which
will house a new contemporary art museum and residential
condominiums.
This mega complex will be a work of art itself and serves
as an icon, which extends and connects the arts and
entertainment corridor in Louisville.
The video shows a synthesis of architects’ diagrammatic
design process, and assumes the job of demonstrate the
values of this bold intervention on the urban context.
It starts with a dynamic shoot of work inside the architects’
atelier, in which the building concept, realized by digital
volumes, takes life in the large plastic model of the city,
confronting with the surroundings. Immediately the new
shape interacts with the context, needing the connection
with new roads.
Then the digital model of the complex, detailed with
constructive elements and rendered, is inserted in a
wireframe digital model of the city and finally in some aerial
photographs which emphasize the meaning of the new
landmark. Moving closer the building, the video camera
goes ashore and shoots the historical settlements blended
with the digital model, thanks to camera matching
technique. An elevation static view, changing the light
conditions from daytime to night, shows the impressive
complex height in comparison with other high buildings and
downtown settings.
The short presentation video, produced in 2009 by
Cadpeople, illustrates the proposed design for the Students
Union at The London School of Economics by 3XN
architects, invited to the architectural competition (Fig.5).
3XNs illustrate the aims of their submission, underlining
their attention to the historical context. “Focused on the
interaction between students from around the world in a
unique environment hosting recreational, academic and
social functions, 3XNs vision for the New Students’ Centre
is about encouraging synergy and social behaviour in a
space the students can call their home. Programmed with
the most efficient layout for the site, meeting the highest
environmental standards and aesthetically taking its place
in the historic city of Westminster, the New Students’
Centre will confirm the University’s global reputation for
excellence”. (http://www.3xn.dk/)
The movie shows the architectural design inserted in the
historic centre, modelled by simple geometries less
detailed and not rendered. The video camera moves
describing a eye-levelled circle around the new building: in
this way it’s evident the perceptive effect of the intervention
coming from the access roads. Only the proposed
architecture is detailed, represented with textures of real
materials and soft rendered.
The relationship with the existing setting is underlined by
moving views from inside to outside, which demonstrate
their efficacy in showing the students’ life inside the all
glazed building and the architects’ wish to open their
architecture to the city.
3. SIMULATING DESIGN IDEAS IN
THE EXISTENTS: A DIDACTIC
ACTIVITY
The research above illustrated, constitutes one topic of a
teaching, entitled Digital representation techniques for
survey and design, given in the University degree of
Science of Architecture (Politecnico di Torino - Italy) and
involves also continuous updating about software /
hardware potentialities and the critical use of these tools by
architects.
Every year, about one hundred students, attending 2nd
and 3rd year of study in Science of Architecture, constitute
the class. In this course they are invited to show their
design ideas developed in the Design Studios, simulating
to participate to a professional architectural competition.
In particular, related to the topic of the present paper, they
have to demonstrate the relationships between the existing
site and new buildings.
In fact Design Studios, coherently with the main
professional charges in our cities, always work on historic
city centre or abandoned industrial areas.
During the practical part of the course, students learn how
to create 3D models, render, static photomontage and

Figure 6: Composition of students’ work.
short videos, using principally the last release of AutoCAD,
3D Studio Max, Photoshop and paying attention to some
useful plug-ins and open source software.
Students start from evaluating the relationship between the
actual intervention area and new buildings, modelling
urban context and alternative solutions for new shapes and
applying solar studies during solstices and equinoxes in
different day times.
Proceeding in their projectual activities they have to go into
dept, relating their design idea with context, for example
about the façades modularity. In this phase generally they
model more detailed buildings in the context and clay
render them in static or dynamic views.
Then, when their concept is quite defined, they have to
verify it on a very detailed model, rendered with materials
and lights and inserted in a photograph of the ambit.
The results of this didactic activity today consist of digital
3D models, photomontages and videos (Fig.6).
4. NEW METHODOLOGIES AND TOLLS
FOR CHECKING DESIGN PROPOSALS
The well-established technique of walk-trough, defined by
the designer, around and inside virtual models inserted,
thanks to camera tracking, in real environments, could
became active when the user is free to move inside mixed
spaces, to explore them, and interact with the environment.
These mixed spaces, if created in Augmented Reality,
could also contain other information fundamental for the
knowledge and comprehension of the project and
environment: in this way the user could interrogate the
models while he is sensorially experiencing the space.
Similar explorations are carried out by the research named
SARC “Spatial Augmented Reality for Architecture”
(Schneider, Tonn, Petzold, Donath 2007), developed in
Bauhaus-University of Weimar. It investigates the
conceptual and technological foundation for the ad-hoc
visualization of interactive three-dimensional (stereoscopic)
and two-dimensional (monoscopic) data on arbitrary
surfaces in real-world indoor environments using a mobile
hardware setup. As the researchers affirm, SARC is a
modern kind of trompe l'oeil “painting” in real-time, and
onto arbitrary surfaces whilst also offering the possibility of
direct interaction with the user.
The process is quite similar to photomontages, but while
these are currently limited to two dimensions, by extending
the same principle into the third dimension, collages can be
spatially experienced.
Planning with images and photos allows the designer to
compose photorealistic spaces in the early phases of the
design process. This project supporting the architectural
design process from survey to design, allows to capture
optical impressions and to work with them in the design
process.
The technology, developed by the group, makes possible
to provide both purely immersive virtual environments as
well as to augment real situations with additional virtual
data and to show changes in surfaces of objects.
Other tools of possible future application in the architectural
design field are offered by low cost devices and free
downloadable services and sofware that allow a
preliminary check of a design proposal for simulating future
architectures.
Up to a little while ago the exploration of the city from
above was allowed only by the highest buildings presents
in the urban settings upraised in recent years; nowadays
the pervasive popularity of some Web programs offers a
new way to interact with the urban environment, furthering
a new kind of exploration to the city as a bird flight, both for
people not involved in the work, (using these tools as a sort
of virtual tourism), and for professionals, in order to deeply
analyze the existing urban context. As a consequence of
that, lately the roofs are losing more and more their
connotation of forgotten corners of the urban landscape, to
rise to the very heart of architectural practice: on the wave
of increasing interest for observations cities from above,
the architecture of last times is characterized by such
examples: in the city of San Francisco, renowned city for its
panoramas, what it is enjoyed from the tower of the De
Young Museum allows to observe one of the most radical
transformations that are affecting the world of architecture:
little beyond the De Young tower there is the seat of the
California Academy of Sciences, designed by the Italian
architect Renzo Piano. The academy is dominated by from
a green roof wavy of 2.5 hectares, in which wildflowers and
other local species will be planted.
In many great cities the population growth means that the
inhabitants of a building have more and more probability to
see towards another smaller building.
And then there's the Google Earth technology: using
images taken from satellites and aerial photographs, this
program and its competitors, such as Bing Maps 3D, have
made possible a new kind of virtual survey, allowing both to
the professionals and to the students to zoom in on the
world to watch from above as the buildings are: "we want to
create a democratic access to views of places where
people live and work," said John Hanke, director of Google
Earth.
The architects say that the influence of a bird's eye views
grow exponentially, in agreement with the thought of Le
Corbusier, who wrote a lot about the potentialities of roofs
to become the "fifth facade" of a building. Customers arrive
at preliminary meetings after studying images on the web,
on which their buildings will arise.
In the most of West towns, some projectual themes, like
reconstruction of empty spaces inside historical centers
and rehabilitation of abandoned industrial areas inside
urban settlements need new methodologies and tools for
checking design proposals which could have, as frequently
have had in the recent past, disastrous impacts on the
image of the city.
These tools enable you to quickly evaluate the impact that
future architectures could have on existing settings.
Using these new tools it is possible not only to observe the
city from the sky, in a passive way. Nowadays there is a
more active use of the 3D city context of the intervention
area (terrain and 3D buildings) taken from some freeware
applications, in order to insert the own design proposal
inside the urban context modelled by the web community.
Online 3D models are increasing: in this regard some
recent applications (such as Google Building Maker, in
which the software provides the tools and photos of
buildings) allow you to use Google Earth associating
simplified models of 3D buildings, where each user can
enforce the database made available to the community;
Today some cities sample were taken as pilot cities and
have completely modelled by the Google employers such
as Philadelphia, Milan and Valencia, while other cities have
only a partial context modelled in three dimensions, but it is
easy to believe that soon they will cover at least the greater
city centres, providing a useful support to designers both in
the initial decision-making phases in the subsequent ones
to blend the virtual model with the existing context.
In a free market scenery competition is cutthroat even for
open source applications: Microsoft's response to Google
SketchUp is an application named 3DVIA Shapes, useful
for creating qualitative three-dimensional models, in order
to simulate the future architectures in building
environments. In fact this software enables similar solution
for inserting simplified model inside the urban context:
“3DVIA Shapes for maps” blends the model with Bing’s
maps owned Microsoft. Thanks to the combination "Bing
Maps 3dViaShapes" even in the 3D world of Microsoft
there are a lot of 3D city already complete, including
Philadelphia. These software have also application for
smartphones: so it is allowed to upload any three-
dimensional model and to link them with a digital image
placing any 3D model into a picture, using zoom and rotate
pan to place 3D model into the photo: in other words it is
possible to prefigure a functional use in the field of
architecture, using a simple (but not so accurate) for the
easy sharing of the project idea into three-dimensional
model, saving it into a library online where you can share
the work with anyone.
The analysis of the urban context is always the starting
point of any design intervention. As regards other freeware
applications can help the work of the professionals: Google
Street View is a feature of Google Maps and Google Earth
that provides panoramic views from a row of positions
along the street (one every approximately 10 or 20 metres)
for many streets in the world, from a height of about 2.5
metres. It has gradually expanded to include more cities,
and in these cities more streets, and also some rural areas.
Google Street View gives a large documentation of the
 existing urban context, easily usable by students and Gregotti, V., 1986. Questioni di architettura. Einaudi: Torino.
professionals. Manovich, L., 2001. The Language of New Media. MIT
A complete and exhaustive photographic survey, both Press: Cambridge, Massachusset.
made by user or directly downloadable by the web, can
also used in the design phase: the software named Moriconi, C., 2001. Il modello virtuale. In Soletti, A., Belardi,
P., Cataliotti, F., Claudio Moriconi professione infografico,
Photosynth (developed by the Microsoft Research Center
Università degli Studi di Perugia, p. 20-30.
Live Labs), apart from being useful for photo slide show on
the web and in 3D mode, can take a collection of Porter, T., 1993. Architectural drawing masterclass: graphic
photographs or virtual images and reconstruct the scene or techniques of the world’s leading architects. Scibner’s Sons:
New York.
object included in a 3D environment (renamed "synth"),
explorable with simple commands; so everyone can easily Schneider, S., Tonn, C., Petzold, F., Donath, D., 2007.
create their own Synth, that can be used both by students Designing with images, ASCAAD, Alexandria, Egypt.
during the survey/inspection of the site, as well as
supporting material to the design professionals in the http://www.3xn.dk/
competition or for any beginning of professional http://www.alsoparchitects.com/
collaboration.
http://www.baiettobattiatobianco.com/
CONCLUSION
http://www.bradfordnewcity.com/default.asp?Page=16
As we have seen below, some new techniques, that offer http://www.brooklynfoundry.com/#/museumplaza
different levels of interactivity and immersivity, like
navigation through virtual models and augmented reality, http://www.cadpeople.com/projects_lse.asp?valgt=lse
still have to fully demonstrate their undoubted potentiality in http://www.museumplaza.net/
this field.
Regarding to augmented reality, also in this case some http://www.rex-ny.com/work/museum-plaza/
technologies created for different purposes could be
http://www.squintopera.com/#/projects/?id=29
applied to the architectural representation in its many
features, starting from the project communication to the
representation both for educational and for professional
purposes.
Other tools are today offered by increasing developments
of web mapping services and related modelling free
downloadable software.
In fact these new web mapping services can constitute an
effective knowledge base in order to hypothesize and
check design proposals. Beside, they allow to blend
together simplified 3D digital models of design ideas,
quickly realized using free software, with the existing urban
context, making the concept phase easier.

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Ciotti, F., Roncaglia, G., 2000. Il mondo digitale.
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Crowe, P., 1991. Architectural rendering. Mies-Rotovision:

Crans-Près-Céligny.

Docci, M, 1997. Prefazione, in Cigola, M., Fiorucci, T.,

(editors), Il disegno di progetto dalle origini al XVIII secolo.
Gangemi: Roma.

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