Immersive Virtual Environments: Experiments on Impacting Design and Human Building Interaction

This research prefaces the need for engaging with endusers in early stages of design as means to achieve higher performing designs with an increased certainty for enduser satisfaction. While the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) community has previously used virtual reality, the primary use has been for coordination and visualization of Building Information Models (BIM). This work builds upon the value of use of virtual environments in AEC processes but asks the research question "how can we better test and measure design alternatives through the integration of immersive virtual reality into our digital and physical mock up workflows? " The work is predicated on the need for design exploration through associative parametric design models, as well as, testing and measuring design alternatives with human subjects. The paper focuses on immersive virtual environments (IVEs) and presents a literature review of the use of virtual environments for integrating enduser feedback during the design stage. In a controlled pilot experiment, the authors find that human participants perform similarly in IVE and the physical environment in everyday tasks. The participants indicated they felt a strong sense of "presence" in IVE. In the future, the authors plan on using IVE to explore the integration of multi agent systems to impact building design performance and occupant satisfaction.