Bolstered Collaborative Review

Challenge: Assure that Ellenzweig’s design processes are optimally informed by Virtual Reality (VR) technology, while reinforcing our collaborative vehicles for analysis, planning, production and construction.

Solution: Having deliberately established a “VR zone” in the heart of Ellenzweig’s open studio, we assure that the interaction that occurs there is primarily focused on evolving excellent architecture, and not on “gaming” for its own sake.  For the teams that gather in this “VR zone,” we approximate the experience of the immersed architect who is wearing the headset by multiple means for the larger group.  In this way, collaborative review can occur involving: exterior building contextual issues, spatial proportion issues, spatial transition issues, direct and ambient lighting issues and a myriad of other design and construction issues, in an immersive, participatory way that would be difficult to achieve without employing VR.  Hardware and software are carefully researched and employed in this “VR zone” so as to offer the best immersive and participatory experience for our design teams, while minimizing any intrusive effect of the VR technology on our fluid, collaborative processes.

Benefit:  Ellenzweig’s “VR zone,” in the heart of our open studio, provides immersive, collaborative opportunities for our design teams to experientially test the concepts that they simultaneously represent via sketching, physical model building, and electronic 3D modeling\rendering.  This new, collaborative node offers us an expanded tool palette in our ongoing endeavor to analyze, plan, design and construct thoroughly studied architectural form for our clients.