Towards a Digital Window: Interpenetrations, challenges and potential of augmented reality in architecture

Abstract

The present work has as its starting point and inspiration in the observation of the habit of staying at the window, mostly performed by older adults, in Lisbon, Portugal. Beginning from this habit, we seek to substantiate, develop, and record speculative and artistic visual experiments that propose a digital reinterpretation of the architectural element window. Such experiments deal with the intertwining of diverse concepts as hybrid architecture, material, digital, virtual, and augmented reality (AR). The experiment, entitled Projected Windows, consists of three different installations where we visually simulate, through image capture and projection, various possibilities of visual reinterpretations of the window in the context of the interior of dwellings. The experiment is based on digital imaging. The first two parts of the experiment are non-interactive AR experience, while the third one is a visual interactive AR experience. The project is in the initial phases of development, indicating the potential of correlating concepts, which allow to fundament experiences and visual narratives that can instigate greater advances in terms of interactivity as the work progresses.