The Life of Buildings - Dr Richard Brook (Manchester Metropolitan University), presented at the Immersive Experiences Showcase Event on 4th Dec 2018, hosted by Creative Media Labs and University of York, Department of Theatre, Film and Television.

1. ❑ create a new grouping from an established series of
professional relationships
❑ develop the existing expertise and experience of the group and its members
❑ provide new histories through the collaborative practice
❑ test existing methods of survey, their interface with navigable
environments and their resolution
❑ test the capacity of embedded digitised audio and visual content
❑ test the user interface design and accessibility
❑ suggest new forms of collaborative professional practice in
the planning and heritage sphere
❑ allow new forms of curating
❑ open archive collections to new audiences
❑ lead to further research
Dr. Richard Brook Manchester School of Architecture
Geoff Bretherick Fablr
AHRC / EPSRC Immersive Experiences
The Life of Buildings
The research will…

2. ❑ produced a unique virtual record of the synagogue
❑ brought together scholars with SMEs and shared knowledge and insights
❑ Used existing technologies in new combinations and pushed the boundaries of digital
heritage
❑ sourced new knowledge from interviews, archives and the public
❑ introduced new methods of curation
AHRC / EPSRC Immersive Experiences
The Life of Buildings
The digital output of the project is twofold – a website, which will continue to act as a way to share its onward
development, and a VR experience, best encountered in a headset, but accessible via web platforms. Both the
website and the VR are intended as repositories for digital and digitised information from a range of sources.
In the virtual reality experience we have created, the participant can move between a series of
three-dimensional views both virtually inside and outside of the synagogue. We have presented the main
spaces of the building using a mixture of data from photogrammetric, laser scan and 3D photography. Once
inside the building we have located audio clips with memories of the building from its congregation that can
be played and listened to. We positioned an archive photo, of a Bat Mitzvah from 1957, in the plane in which it
was taken and you can see the rest of the room that was outside of the photographer’s frame. There’s a clip
from a wedding video, also overlaid with the building and viewed from the position of the camera operator.
You can stand above the architects plan and see the building around it.
The research has…

3. Investigating the technology has enabled
us to recognise three specific areas for
future investigation:
There is a technical gap in the processing
of large meshes made by laser scan and
photogrammetry and their downsampling
to VR environments.
The geo-location of data is not yet accurate
enough or accessible enough to enable a first
person mixed reality experience of a building in
real space.
Untethered devices use methods other than GPS
or fixed sensors to locate themselves in space. Their
use outdoors and in urban spaces is still unreliable.
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AHRC / EPSRC Immersive Experiences
The Life of Buildings
Learning

4. For phase two of a three-phase project there are two distinct work packages
with a number of subsidiary elements:
1. The enrichment and development of the existing VR experience
2. The research connected to the geo-location of 3D data in real space
and its production as an augmented reality experience
The enrichment of the VR will include: further investigations into the downsampling
and effective use of LIDA and/or photogrammetric point clouds and 3D meshes into
navigable first person environments; the addition of acoustic modelling through
survey tools into the VR experience; the interface design and user operability within
the experience.
The geo-location of 3D data in real space and its accessibility via smart wearable
glasses (e.g. Microsoft Hololens) is currently limited by the inoperability of such
devices in exterior environments, but certain commercial applications are getting
close to realising this type of interface
AHRC / EPSRC Immersive Experiences
The Life of Buildings
Development

5. AHRC / EPSRC Immersive Experiences
The Life of Buildings
Outcomes
www.thelifeofbuildings.org.uk