BETWEEN REALITY AND VIRTUALITY : USER-CENTRIC ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Digital revolution has brought about changes in our world and our reality. The virtual is increasingly integrated onto our daily lives, changing our perception of reality and physical spaces, altering social norms and how we experience and behave in spaces. This creates opportunities for a new architecture that is in line with the final stage of the progression of virtuality, an architecture in which there is no distinction between real and virtual, which incorporates both real and virtual spaces in its spatial experience.

Architecture and virtuality, however, are two separate entities that seem difficult to integrate. Architecture, instead of being the interface between the virtual and the real, seems to be either a bystander or a container for digital appliances.

User is the important element that could bridge the real and virtual. A shift in the role of user in architecture seems to be necessary in order to integrate reality and virtuality in architecture. This integration is made possible by the continuous interaction between user and the space, which involves sensory feedback from the space to the user.

The architecture of the real and the virtual is then a user-centric architecture which acts as an intersectional infrastructure between real and virtual which is centered on the stimulation of senses as spatial experience.