Cornell in Rome instructor Jeffrey Blanchard, left, takes a moment to point out important aspects of the Roman Forum from atop the Capitoline Hill. Learn more about the Cornell in Rome program.
Bachelor of fine arts students present thesis projects in a final presentation and critique at the end of the spring semester. The B.F.A. curriculum combines the intensive studio culture of the art department with enhanced access to electives in all areas of the university. Learn more about applying to the B.F.A. program.
Upcoming lecture: Roisin Heneghan is an architect and cofounder of Heneghan Peng Architects, a practice working with landscape, urban planning, and architecture with offices in Dublin and Berlin.
Architecture Portfolio: Lecture, Workshop, and Critiques happening January 31–February 1. Sponsored by the Department of Architecture and AAP Connect.
Epic Games Inc. Supports Architecture Faculty Research in VR for Design
Faculty in the Department of Architecture have received a cash gift from Epic Games Inc. in support of their work on Virtual Places, a project that is adapting the company's virtual reality (VR) gaming engine, Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), for architectural and urban design. Professor Henry Richardson, Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, and Assistant Professor of the Practice Martin Miller comprised the research team selected for the gift from a group of seven invited finalists in an international competition.
"Virtual Places was launched this spring with a research seminar called Gaming Architecture," explains Richardson, who cotaught the class with Dogan and Miller. "Both upper-class undergraduates and graduate students 'stress tested' several VR programs, including UE4, to match their capabilities with desired real-time design workflows."
In addition to their gift, Epic Games Inc. conducted a weekend workshop with the class to guide students and field questions around the software — and, because the primary goal of the seminar was to compare emerging VR technologies as they open possibilities for architectural and urban design, students also took free webinars provided by other software developers such as Mindesk.
"VR is an exceedingly powerful tool — being able to jump in and out of the environment from the onset of a design project to test and specify materials continuously with immediate feedback is a game changer," says Miller. "As architects, we rely on a wealth and understanding of codified placeholders or stand-ins. Where traditionally a poché, or fill, in a drawing would be a representation of a particular material, VR and the physically based renderings available in Unreal make the material highly accurate. VR makes it possible to understand the implications of different material selections and refine choices based on the quality of space before specifying and ultimately constructing something."
This summer, the Virtual Places research team will finalize software builds and resulting virtual architectural and urban design assets with the support of software development consultants at Epic Games Inc. and architecture industry participants who have shown interest in the project including FXCollaborative; Kohn, Pedersen, Fox Architects; and SHoP Architects.
The Gaming Architecture seminar and Virtual Places research project are both phases in testing emergent VR technology for its design capability as well as in the development of the first virtual reality design studio to be offered at any school of architecture, planned for fall 2019 in the Department of Architecture at AAP.
By Edith Fikes