Development of a virtual editing method to support design for renovation targeting living environment for long-term care

Abstract

With the increase in the population in need of care, the number of housing renovations for long-term care is increasing rapidly. In the renovation process, architectural drawings presented by designers are difficult to understand for clients without expertise, and thus the process of design proposal and modification is not streamlined. In this study, we propose a computer-aided design system for renovation of ordinary housings for in-house care, in which a designer virtually edits the shape and location of real objects in an existing house to show the design proposals graphically. The interior space is virtualized using spherical images based on an image-based modeling method, and the view-dependent texture mapping technique enables the virtual editing of real objects to visualize the living space after renovation. For the adaptive texture mapping method, images from appropriate viewpoints are selectively switched from the group of spherical images as view-dependent textures for the editable real object. This technique makes the design process for housing renovation intuitive and interactive. The use cases of the design support system is demonstrated through a renovation design process for a nursing care environment in a real Vietnamese house.