The transformation in human life and living dynamics has accelerated in the last century, and this has caused the functional life of an architectural structure to be shortened compared to its structural life and the formation of dysfunctional and abandoned structures.
Flexible architecture is an approach to deal with this problem by increasing the functionality of buildings and extending their functional life. Mixed reality architecture, on the other hand, is a mixed reality approach that provides a flexible spatial topology covering physical and virtual environments, and in this respect, it contributes to the solution of the problem. However, neither the false promise of flexible architecture nor the inadequacy of application of mixed reality architecture in architectural practice has produced a solution to this problem. This thesis brings a new approach and a design/guideline to mixed reality architecture by redefining architecture as an interface that minimizes
the conflict and incompatibility between virtual and physical and provides a solution to the problem of architecture’s inability to respond to transformations with this Augmented Flexibility.
Augmented Flexibility will redefine human-space relationships and interactions and bring a new approach to the experience of space. The physical/tangible bits of the Augmented Flexibility are defined as hybrid affordances to be interfaces for mixed reality environments, providing a holistic experience for the physical and virtual layers. While this allows the space to be experienced in all its physical and virtual layers, it also enables distant spaces to interact with each other; in other
words, architecture turns into a spatial communication tool that defines a space where present, remote, and virtual environments and their users can co-exist. Therefore, by transforming into a spatial communication and interaction tool, space gains the potential to become a media as it used to be. Architecture produces not only new types of spatial experiences and user interactions through mixed reality technologies but also enables physical space to be a part of the spatial internet by interacting with virtual and remote physical environments. This will create spatial possibilities for architecture waiting to be explored and put architecture in an irreversible process of change and development.
This thesis brings a new approach to mixed-reality architecture. It redefines architecture as an interface between physical
and virtual spaces to deal with the false promise of flexibility in architecture and the inadequacy of the application of
mixed-reality architecture to realize spatial co-presence. This can be illustrated as adding a virtual layer to shearing layers
of change.
The proposal built on 3 concepts. Using physical bits and tangible interface units to define architectural interface, Redefining
mixed reality architecture by this interface approach and use it for spatial computer supported co presence.
Architectural Interface Units / Pixels / Voxels
Mechanic Solution Physical Protoype
Pneumatic Solution Physical Protoype
Mechanic Solution Conceptual Diagram
Pneumatic/Hydrolic Solution Conceptual Diagram
Architectural Vision
User-Space Interaction Experiments
System Design Diagram
General Function Diagram
• With hybrid affordances, an architectural layout can be made at room scale, and spatial forms of virtual or remote physical spaces can be shape displayed.
• The digital twins of the users or objects in the remote physical space or virtual space created on the digital host function as haptic interfaces or placeholders to the physical twins created by the use of hybrid affordances in the design.
• It is possible to create small-scale manipulations and programmed movements that constantly transform themselves; these can also be produced in a virtual environment or a remote physical environment, and shape displays also can be made.
• Capturing the people and objects in the room with the depth-sensitive LiDAR cameras of the upper pixels and the image processing technology of the system and creating their digital twins on the digital host and recreating them in remote mixed reality architectural cells.
• Using the surfaces of the voxels as mixed reality boundaries, 2D images can be displayed.
Hybrid Layered Spatial Topologies
Expandable Space Concept & ‘Virtual” Mixed-Reality Boundary
MRA cell as a vehicle to move through 3D tesselated Mixed Reality
An Alternate Metaverse Concept
Tesselated Syncronized Distributed Spatial Spaces
The space is divided into two zones as inner-outer cells to distinguish
Public - Private, and Mixed Reality - Physical Zones
Usage Scenerios - with Mixed-Reality Layer
Augmented Flexibility Prototype Video