Empathy in Point Clouds: Reconstructing Spatial Ideas & Storytelling through Immersive Technologies in Architecture

Dawn Gilpin, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning

Collaborators: Damien Provost, Managing Director, Robotics Institute; Bill Manspeaker, ITS Manager, Taubman College; Jim Whitmore and Brian Bradley, FARO reps; Tom Bray and Linda Knox, Duderstadt Center 

This research is also being conducted through a UARTS Faculty Engineering/Arts Student Team (FEAST) project.

FEAST Team: Ankita Mahajan, College of Engineering; Matthew Priskorn, College of Engineering; Dak Daruri, College of Engineering; Andrew Scheffer, College of Engineering; Karun Ellango, College of Engineering; Ben Rossano, College of Engineering; Xin Li, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Nellie Shih, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Nicole Tooley, LSA; James Benjey, School of Information

This research builds interdisciplinary teams to develop tools enabling methods of spatial investigation in design and presentation using immersive technologies. The tutorials, workflows, and app development enable conceptual extensions of foundational techniques for students in triangulation, drawing, and modeling. After years of studying full-scale architecture, one can imagine the intention of the design idea in perspectival and orthographic representations. Through VR/AR and immersive projection, the one is able to analyze and experience a spatial idea (photogrammetic point cloud) in the context of the site model (LiDAR point cloud).