Reenvisioning Everyday Architecture - Experiments in Visual Mapping and Hybrid Media

Oct 29, 2026

Submission for the 2023 ACSA Creative Achievement Award documents a Virginia Tech B.Arch 2021/22 thesis concentration cohort exploring how architecture can respond as domestic life, remote work, and healthcare norms shift. Thirteen students combine architectural ethnography with augmented reality and projection mapping to study spatial conditions through full-scale mockups, orthographic drawings enhanced by 3D scans, and immersive cyclorama video experiments. The work challenges ethnographic traditions by decolonizing knowledge production, using exhibits to imagine new everyday realities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Representation and Mapping of Spatial Conditions

Ethnographic Drawings and Decolonizing Methodologies

Immersive Model Environments and Exhibitions

Reenvisioning Everyday Architecture: Experiments in Visual Mapping and Hybrid Media Submission for 2023 ACSA Creative Achievement Award Aki Ishida Associate Professor Virginia Tech School of Architecture Reenvisioning Everyday Architecture: Experiments in Visual Mapping and Hybrid Media As the landscapes of domestic life, remote work, healthcare, and other social norms shift, how does architecture respond? Through architectural ethnography and augmented reality, a group of 13 thesis students at Virginia Tech uncovered opportunities for reenvisioning everyday architecture from the perspective of its inhabitants. As an alternative to the tradition of independently advised thesis year, our B.Arch program in 2021/22 introduced Thesis Concentration Areas, a cohort of students who broadly shared interest in a faculty’s research, in which each student would identify and develop their own thesis. Our group began with a focus on relations between the built environment and human health, and applied design research methods I had used in transdisciplinary healthcare design projects, including ethnography, full-scale mockups, and augmented reality (Fig. 1, 2) . During the fall semester, the students focused on representation and mapping of spatial conditions Fig. 1 Using full-scale mockup with projection mapping to bodystorm interactions at patient’s bedside Fig. 2 Using projected images and videos to mockup a nurses station at full scale Fig. 3 Domestic interior by Kon Wajiro in Modernology (1930) by observing everyday spaces. We expanded on the traditions of ethnographic drawings by architects such as Kon Wajiro, who documented changes in cityscape and people as Japan modernized during the interwar years (Fig. 3), and Atelier Bow Wow, who published drawings of “accidental”buildings and urban conditions in Pet Architecture and Made in Tokyo. We incorporated new methodologies to begin to question the colonial roots of anthropological ethnography. This effort to reexamine and redirect ethnographic studies parallels a movement by anthropologists to include the subjects in the knowledge-production process (Fig. 4), and continues with further intentionality in my current cohort of 2022/23 . Fig. 4 Decolonizing Ethnography by Alonso Bejarano, et al. (2019) Fig. 7 Song 1 by Doug Aitken at the Hirshhorn Museum (2012) The students made drawings to visualize a complex array of interactions between people, technology, built environment, and information by augmenting orthographic drawings with 3D scans, time-lapse images, and animations as means to capture actions and spatial relations that our eyes might miss. In late Fall, each student identified their own site and program, which included housing, schools, clinics, and infrastructures, that enabled further investigation of the thesis that emerged from their studies. In early Spring, the group held an exhibit in Virginia Tech’s Cube (Fig. 3), blackbox theater designed for augmented environment experimentations, to explore with projection mapping on physical models (Fig. 5 ) and video projection on the cycloroma (Fig. 6), a set of 360-degree cylindrical screens with immersive sounds. We learned from examples by computer scientists who reimagined Office of the Future where all surfaces in an office space could become a digital display, innovators in medicine that train surgeons to operate on human bodies using augmented reality, and artists such as Krzysztof Wodiczko and Doug Aitkin (Fig. 7) who project videos and photographs on buildings as a form of narrative, protest, and provocation. The technique of mapping physical models with projected images and videos blurs the distinctions between virtual and real, and digital and physical. Fig. 5 Projection mapping on a foamcore model at the New Realities exhibit in Cube (2022) Methodologies adapted from healthcare design provided the means to critically observe the spaces they encounter every day. They enabled us to imag

FAQs

What is the main research question behind this submission?

It asks how architecture responds when everyday social norms—such as domestic life, remote work, and healthcare—are transformed.

How do the students represent and map spatial conditions?

They visualize interactions using drawings augmented with 3D scans, time-lapse images, animations, full-scale mockups, and projected imagery and video.

What role does augmented reality play in the project?

Augmented reality and hybrid visual methods support reenvisioning everyday architecture from inhabitants’ perspectives and help capture actions and spatial relations beyond direct observation.

Oct 29, 2026

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