Augmented Transportation

UCLA IDEAS Technology Studio Winter 2017

Research Lead: Guvenc Ozel 

Instructors: Guvenc Ozel, Benjamin Ennemoser

Technologies: XR, computational design, gaming engines, transforming architectures, autonomous vehicles and urban design, media interfaces

Students: Alara Akiltopu, Erik Sven Broberg, Jon Bruni, Yifan Chen, Wai Ching Cheng, Alisha Toni Coelho, Hung The Diep, Qisen Dong, Arta Ghoorchian, Zhe Liang, Jian Liu, Teng Long, Tian Lou, Sana Sultan Nasikwala, Tyson Keen Phillips, Nazli Tatar, Zhuoneng Wang, Jinghao Xue, Yue Yang, Xincheng Ye, Zhiyu Zhang, Junzhishan Zhu

Popularly labeled as the 4th Industrial Revolution, proliferation of additive manufacturing, robotics, sensors, virtual reality and artificial intelligence is starting to change the socioeconomic structure of our society and consequently revolutionizing the way we design and experience spaces. Coupled with climate change, political tensions and ever-increasing mobility, cyberphysical systems are projected to make the spaces we occupy more intelligent, transient and agile, yet meanwhile might dramatically change the fabrics of our societies as labor becomes progressively more automated.

Mobility systems emerge as the entry point for many of these new technological developments. Intelligent transport systems are changing the way we envision and inhabit spaces as the nature, speed and range of transport change. Although the speed of transport is increased and made more efficient, the amount of time spent during transport is increasing as the distinctions between work and leisure spaces blur. The notions of architecture and transportation are starting to merge as autonomous vehicles are exceedingly being considered as extensions of architectural spaces; enhanced with interactive technologies and media interfaces. These new media interfaces in the form of virtual and augmented reality are used to construct larger interactive digital worlds in confined physical spaces. As a consequence, the autonomous transportation vehicle becomes an architecture in motion in the digital and the physical worlds. Originating from the premise, the studio views autonomous vehicles as extension of architecture, or “moving rooms”, and aims to analyze networks and logistics of autonomous transportation and their impact on the built environment.