VRDR - An Attempt to Evaluate BIM-based Design Studio Outcome Through Virtual Reality

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic situation, educational institutions were forced to conduct all academic activities in distance learning formats, including the architecture program. This act barred interaction between students and supervisors only through their computer's screen. Therefore, in this study, we explored an opportunity to utilize virtual reality (VR) technology to help students understand and evaluate design outcomes from an architectural design studio course in a virtual environment setting. The design evaluation process is focused onbuilding affordance and user accessibility aspect based on the design objectives that students must achieve. As a result, we developed a game-engine based VR system called VRDR for evaluating design studio outcomes modeled as Building Information Modeling (BIM) models. © 2021 and published by the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong.