Designing Architecture’s Hyper‐Reality: Leveraging mixed reality as architectural components

Abstract

The thesis explores how mixed reality can be employed as an additional layer of architectural elements. The developments in mixed reality have changed the affective relationship between inhabitants and spaces while redefining architectural boundaries. Namely, the embodied interface, which can significantly alter the perceived reality, will become an architectural element inseparable from the rest of the spatial components when deployed in a room. The project explored aged nursing homes to examine the instrumental effect of embodied interfaces as a slice into the discussion of its implications as elements of architecture. Design for aging has been gaining attention within the architectural discourse. Its innate social and spatial specificities offer a terrain to investigate the utility of embodied interfaces, including augmenting spatial qualities and enhancing the connection between the site and its inhabitants. The project designs a prototype that examines the affective impacts of perceived architecture experiences and asserts mixed reality as architecture’s new design paradigm.