PAVILION in VR
Utilizing the Virtualization workflow, I developed the Pavilion project by Perkins&Will Vancouver into an immersive VR experience.
Task
Utilizing Virtual Reality and Game Engines to augment the design process of an Architectural project.
I started working on this project in the early conceptual phase, but most of my energies were spent on taking the ideas into Virtual Reality with the VIRTUALIZATION process I was working on as a Researcher-in-Residence at Perkins&Will.
This was a great opportunity to bring VR into the workflow, as the small scale of the project made it quick to convert and process into Unreal Engine. While we would normally render out views, this process allowed us to throw ideas like petal shapes, tiling patterns, and colors into VR and test.
We were able to invite the client to the office to try walkthroughs and flyarounds of the Pavilion, helping to sell the feel of a particularly unique design.
These are some of the work-in-progress visualizations of the Pavilion during the design phase.
Having the project ready in Unreal Engine also allowed for the production of rendered video walkthroughs. Here, instead of controlling the scene, camera paths were scripted and the project rendered into video.
A process that usually took days to coordinate with rendering companies to plan and render could be planned and output in the matter of hours.
The result is a generous and visible public realm—with an eye-catching retail pavilion at its centre—that has become both the front door and heart of a new creative district, and an elegant office building that is stitched into the fabric of the campus and the surrounding community. (Perkins&Will)
The Pavilion completed construction in 2019, sitting beside another of Perkins&Will’s projects along Vancouver’s Great Northern Way.
Check out some of the additional links to see the technologies that went into putting together this organic architectural form!
See more of the Pavilion project by Perkins&Will Vancouver.
