gamemaking | studio any

Virtual Architecture and SpaceTimeCraft

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Long-term research project investigating forms of architecture aesthetics and navigable experience specific to digital media, culminating in the upcoming doctoral dissertation at Aalto ARTS titled SpaceTimeCraft, expected in 2025.

The project explores the aesthetic experience of movement specific to physically inconstructible virtual environments. This is the experience in interactive spatiotemporal environments which are impossible to construct or come across in physical reality, but are only experienceable through immersive digital media such as VR and videogames. This theme is explored through cross-disciplinary research parallel to applied prototyping exploring the case study of procedurally generated low-dimensional non-Euclidean virtual environments. The aim of the project is to provide a unifying framework for understanding, analyzing, and developing virtual navigable experience, with a view towards enabling the design of novel forms of experience that can help expand what we currently conceive as experienceable by the human sensory apparatus.

The project follows an integrative methodology, and spans multiple research approaches including:

exploratory gamemaking and VR development;
hardware prototyping;
media archeology of the evolution of digital design software, VR technologies, and videogames;
original publications in the context of architecture, artistic research, and game studies; as well as
development and teaching of original courses in gamemaking and VR development.

The project was initiated following the development of project Anywhere at ETH Zurich in 2014. It was developed further through interdisciplinary research and publishing, as well as through extensive teaching of original curricula on experimental game and VR development, including the Virtual Spaces Master Studio at TU Graz (2016-2017), as well as multiple shorter workshops. Aspects of this research have been informed through studies in computer music and spatial audio at the renowned Institute of Electronic Music of KU Graz conducted between 2018 and 2019. In late 2019, this was formalized into a doctoral research project at Aalto University, School of Arts, within the context of the Experience Design project funded by the Research Council of Finland, titled: SpaceTimeCraft: Integrative Research through Design into the Experience of Virtual Navigation, with its defense expected in 2025.

See below for a list of related publications and presentations.

Virtual Acoustic Ecologies II

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:00:32 +0300

Week-long workshop focusing the exploration of architectural acoustics through experimental game design. The course was developed and taught together with Achilleas Xydis and Anna Maragkoudaki (DARCH, ETH Zurich).

Seminar week; Summer semester 2025
Architectural Acoustics Lab; Gramazio Kohler Research
Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.

Workshop brief

This seminar week uses experimental game design to explore architectural acoustics by developing speculative spatiotemporal environments. The course begins with playful exercises to sensitize participants to the auditory dimension of architectural environments, largely overlooked in visual-based design processes despite its significance for spatial experience. It continues by introducing tools and techniques for developing interactive spatiotemporal assemblages using the Unity game engine. These tools include workflows for digitizing real architectural environments through 3D scanning and tools for virtual acoustic simulation. Throughout the week, participants develop their own playable experience using acoustics as a design driver to express different qualities of architectural space. The week closes with a public exhibition of all projects.

Virtual Acoustic Ecologies

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 09:00:32 +0300

Week-long workshop focusing the exploration of architectural acoustics through experimental game design. The course was developed and taught together with Achilleas Xydis (AA Lab, ETH Zurich).

Seminar week; Winter semester 2024
Architectural Acoustics Lab; Gramazio Kohler Research
Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich.

Workshop brief

This seminar uses experimental game design to explore acoustic qualities of architectural space, which are often neglected in visual-based design processes however, are irreducible counterparts of spatial experience. The course begins with a practical exploration of architectural acoustic through playful exercises to cultivate auditory sensibilities of architectural environments. It then introduces the Unity game engine through design experiments focusing on the acoustics of virtual environments. Throughout the week, participants develop their own playable experience using acoustics as a design driver to express different qualities of architectural space. The week closes with a public exhibition of all projects.

Virtual Spaces Master Studio

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 16:21:47 +0300

Table of Contents

Outline

Course designer and lead teacher for the Virtual Spaces Master Studio module (16 ECTS) at the Institute of Architecture and Media, TU Graz, during the summer semester of 2016. The objective of the studio was to introduce virtual reality as a medium for experimental design, and to explore designing virtual environments in both space and time. At the end of the semester each student produced, presented, and exhibited a VR experience (for Gear VR and Kinect v2).


Type	Master studio module; academic; master level
Module courses	Master design studio; Interdisciplinary Media elective; Architecture & Film elective
Context	Institute of Architecture and Media, TU Graz
Module credits	16 ECTS
Duration	Full semester (summer semester 2016)
Participants	13 (architecture students)
Deliverables	Individual VR application (Samsung Gear VR); video presentation; documentation booklet
Exhibitions	Graz Open Architecture Day; TU Graz VR Night

Course information

Course description
Virtual Spaces Master Studio (VSMS) was an experimental VR game design course (16 ECTS master design studio module) taught during the summer semester of 2016 to a group of 13 architecture master students, at the Institute of Architecture and Media, Faculty of Architecture, TU Graz. The aim of the studio was to introduce architects to VR as a platform for experimental architectural design that doesn’t need to result in building form. The VSMS module included the electives “Interdisciplinary Media: Space to Sound” and “Architecture & Film”. The module was taught by Constantinos Miltiadis and Prof. Urs Hirschberg.

Working essentially in the videogame medium, the design approach of the studio is a fusion of disciplines, techniques, and skills that require the parallel development of both technical and conceptual tools such as concept design and narrative development, storyboarding, interaction design, UI design, 3d modeling, sound design, video editing, scripting, app development, etc. The course introduced theoretical discussions of culture and space, analyzing and drawing inspiration from diverse discourses including video games, films, novels, architecture, and critical theory. In addition to VR the students were asked to experiment with spatial evocations in other creative media such as text, sound, video, and 2D graphics.

The breadth of the 13 works developed by individual students demonstrates that VR and the videogame medium hold significant potential for architectural explorations of many different kinds, including the design of experienceable spatiotemporal environments that are impossible to come across in physical reality. Furthermore, the course showed that many aspects of designerly and tacit knowledges as well as technical design skills are well transferable between architecture and game design and development.

Course language

The studio as well as the electives are taught in English.

Setup

The VR setup is wireless and full-body immersive, was based on project Anywhere (2014) and made use of GearVR headsets (courtesy of Drei Austria) deployed in a space tracked by Kinect V2 sensors which can follow 25 points of a user’s skeleton, synchronized with the android app through a web cloud in real-time.

Output

All projects were made with Unity3D for Android/GearVR. All module output is digital.

Review jury

Final review (30.06.2016) : Jan Markus Ludwig (Wideshot), Lewis Scott (VizConnected), and Florian Fend (IAM).

Hardware

The studio was sponsored by Drei Austria with four sets of GearVR headsets and Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphones.

Note: The projects trailer video is a collage of video trailers of students’ projects. It is a reupload of the original first published in 07.2016, which was archived due to the university’s privacy policy, along with the course websites (course website (IAM TU Graz) and project videos collection).

Student projects

Edna Basanovic - The Island
Björn Gerd Seidl - Beyond Space
David Seiwald - basic needs
Felix Obermair - dream XYZ
Ines Zajkic - Museum
Kathrin Wutte - Room Dilemma
Kelly Man - Architecture of I
Ludwig Grimm - ΜΕΘΕΞΙΣ
Michael Deutsch - RISEvr
Philipp Glanzner - volunteer
Philipp Schnitzhofer - Future Visions
Primoz Brglez - GYRO
Xin Guo - The Labyrinth

Auxiliary events

Studio excursion

2-day excursion to Linz, including a tour of Ars Electronica and Deep Space 8K by AEC managing director Andreas Bauer; Hohen Rausch; Lentos Museum, Schlossmueum; Tabak Fabrik.

Guest lectures

Michael Hansmeyer (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) – Tools of Imagination (IAM guest for the Graz Architecture Lectures 2016)
Prof. Werner Jauk (Musicology Institute, KFU-Graz) – Sound to space
IOhannes zmölnig (Institute of Electronic Music, Kunst Uni Graz) – Introduction to granular synthesis with Pure Data

Exhibitions

TU Graz VR Night, public exhibition, 28.06.2016, organized by the TU Graz Institutes CGV, ICG and IICM, in cooperation with Fraunhofer Austria.
Graz Open Architecture Day, public exhibition, 01.07.2016

Teaching team

Teaching assistants

Ludwig Grimm
Julian Jauk
Martin Schrotz

Teachers

Constantinos Miltiadis (course leader; design studio; Interdisciplinary Media elective)
Prof. Urs Hirschberg (Architecture & Film elective, design studio)

Gallery

project Anywhere

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 18:04:19 +0300

The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter.
(Ivan E. Sutherland, The Ultimate Display 1965)

project Anywhere is a framework and proof-of-concept prototype for full-body interactive wireless VR, developed at the Chair for CAAD, ETH Zurich in 2014, to investigate notions of virtual space and time, and to explore designing synthetic spatiotemporal sensory experiences. The project was initiated in mid-2014, following the release of the first commercial VR devices that featured limited bodily involvement and capacity for movement. Addressing these limitations, this project developed a VR framework consisting of a mobile application, custom wireless VR HMDs and data glove prototypes as well as skeleton tracking, to produce a vivid real-time interactive presence in a virtual reality environment In that, project Anywhere demonstrates the potential of virtual space as a valid architectural medium in itself (instead of its use as an intermediary form for design or visualization), that allows experimenting with synthetic kinaesthetic, visual and auditory sensory experiences. Concurrently it explores the capacity of designing spatiotemporal environments with an embedded dimension of time. The project’s title, “Anywhere”, refers to the generic nature of the digital-virtual environment that can be made to simulate any physical context: real or imaginary.

Video demo

Project description

The project consists of the following bespoke software and hardware prototypes:

a mobile multiplayer VR app,
Omnimask: a 3D printed mobile VR head-mount ,
Inteligloves: a pair of custom wireless data gloves, and
Omnitracker: a sensor fusion software.

The main component of the project is a custom mobile application (1) developed in Unity as a multiplayer VR videogame. Mounted on a VR mask (2), the app provides a stereoscopic viewport for each individual user, through the point of view of their avatar in the shared virtual environment.

Each user’s spatial presence is tracked in real-time by their head-mount, data gloves, and a Kinect skeleton tracking sensor. Cumulatively, head, gesture and skeleton tracking provide 86 degrees of freedom, fused together by the Omnitracker (4), a software written in Java/Processing. These data are synchronized with a web cloud and are use to animate the user’s avatar in real-time (see image13).¹ Thus, any movement of the subject in physical space, such as walking, or even head tilting and finger movement correlates 1:1 to movements of their avatar.

Hardware prototypes developed for this project include a 3D printed VR head-mount (2) and a pair of data gloves (3). The VR head-mount was designed for an iPhone 5, and featured adjustable inter-pupillary distance, and focal length.
The data gloves (3) were developed using Arduino microcontrollers. Each glove features an XBEE transceiver module, a 9 DoF sensor, and up to 6 flex sensors (for tracking individual finger movement). These were mounted on a lightweight elastic 3D printed glove base, easily adjustable for different hand sizes. The framework was programmed to recognize hand gestures, used for performing various contextual virtual actions (see for example image 8), proving that a virtual presence can also be an active one.

Constantinos Miltiadis (2016). Project Anywhere: An Interface for Virtual Architecture. IJAC 14 (4).
Constantinos Miltiadis (2015). Virtual Architecture in a Real-time, Interactive, Augmented Reality Environment - project Anywhere and the potential of Architecture in the age of the Virtual. eCAADe 2015. TU Delft.
Photon Engine Dev Story (2015). Project Anywhere – Digital Route to an Out-of-Body Experience

Awards

Ivan Petrovic Prize for the “best presentation by a young researcher” for the paper “Virtual Architecture in a Real-time, Interactive, Augmented Reality Environment”. eCAADe 2015, TU Vienna, September 2015.
Second place Zeiss VR One Contest for Mobile VR Apps, 2015.
Arthur C. Clarke prize for “the most creative and unorthodox approach”. Museum of Science Fiction international architectural competition, 2014.

Press

The Guardian & The Observer Tech Monthly (2015)
Project Anywhere: digital route to an out-of-body experience : Constantinos Miltiadis’s project combines inteligloves and Kinect sensors to an Oculus Rift-style headset to provide the ultimate in impressive digital experiences.
Euronews High Tech; Euronews Next (2015)
Euronews Next. Project Anywhere: an out-of-body experience of a new kind Proyecto Anywhere, una nueva forma de jugar en línea - hi-tech [Spanish]
Reuters (2015)
Project Anywhere takes virtual reality gaming to new level
DesignBoom (2014)
Subjects manipulate project anywhere’s virtual universe in real-time
Museum of Science Fiction (2014)
The preview museum: A departure from museums as usual…
Fubiz (2014) Virtual Universe in Real-time [French]

Exhibitions & installations

Demonstration at the Carl Zeiss Headquarters, in the context of the Zeiss VR One App Contest. Oberkochen, Germany, June 2015
Public installation at TEDxNTUA. Athens, 17.01.2015

Project information

project Anywhere was developed as a postgraduate master thesis in 2014 at the Chair for CAAD, ETH Zurich, Prof. Ludger Hovestadt. It was first demonstrated at the Chair for CAAD in November 2014.

Credits

Concept and development
Constantinos Miltiadis
Prototyping support
Demetris Shammas & Achilleas Xydis

Video credits

Filming & Editing
Demetris Shammas
Photo documentation
Achilleas Xydis
Music
Michalis Shammas Subject
Anna Maragkoudaki

Images

For a discussion of the networking topology of this project see the 2015 Photon Engine Dev story: Project Anywhere – Digital Route to an Out-of-Body Experience. ↩︎

gamemaking | studio any

Virtual Architecture and SpaceTimeCraft

Virtual Acoustic Ecologies II

Workshop brief

Virtual Acoustic Ecologies

Workshop brief

Virtual Spaces Master Studio

Outline

Course information

Course language

Setup

Output

Review jury

Hardware

Student projects

Auxiliary events

Studio excursion

Guest lectures

Exhibitions

Teaching team

Gallery

project Anywhere

Video demo

Project description

Related publications

Awards

Press

Exhibitions & installations

Project information

Credits

Video credits

Images