This post-doctoral project, conducted by Adeline Stals at UCBerkeley, aims at studying the opportunities of virtual reality in regard of broadening architectural SME’s creative exploration, supporting their early design decisions and communication.

In this project, it is hypothesized that Virtual Reality can support the early phases of architectural processes better than conventional computerized interfaces. It achieves such result by offering immersive and interactive computer-generated environments for one or multi users to visualize, navigate and interact with a world that mimic the real physical one. This project expects VR immersion within design environments to increase designers’ involvement with the design itself, to enrich their imagination and creativity and to increase their design’s complexity. VR directs architects from designing for form to designing for human behavior and spatial experience.