Titre de la dissertation : « Integrating Immersive Technologies for Algorithmic Design in Architecture »

Promoteur: Monsieur Tom Mens ; co-promoteur: Monsieur Mohamed-Anis Gallas

Résumé de la dissertation :Architectural design practice has radically evolved over the course of its history, due to technological improvements that gave rise to advanced automated tools for many design tasks. Traditional paper drawings and scale models are now accompanied by 2D and 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software.While such tools improved in many ways including performance and accuracy, the modalities of user interaction have mostly remained the same, with 2D interfaces displayed on 2D screens.The maturation of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) has led to some level of integration of these immersive technologies into architectural practice, but mostly limited to visualisation purposes, e.g. to show a finished project to a potential client.We posit that there is potential to employ such technologies earlier in the architectural design process and therefore explore that possibility with a focus on Algorithmic Design (AD), a CAD paradigm that relies on (often visual) algorithms to generate geometries.The main goal of this thesis is to demonstrate that AR and VR can be adopted for AD activities. To provide the corresponding evidence, we follow an iterative prototype-based methodology that lead us to develop proof-of-concept research prototypes and evaluate them. These prototypes show that the challenge of integrating immersive technologies into AD activities should be tackled by a multi-modal approach, and that different types of tools are needed to cover different levels of interaction and use cases in the architectural design context. Based on our contributions and the feedback we gathered, we additionally provide insights as to future perspectives In the field.