My first Publication Arup_BuildingDesign2020_v2 | Page 22

Case Study: Academic-Industrial Design Hubs
Meta’s Spaceglasses add a third dimension
to the Augmented Reality interface made
popular by Google Glass, enabling users
wearing proprietary goggles to view and to
manipulate virtual 3D objects in real time
using simple gestures.
Augmented reality, immersive
environments, and visualisation techniques
adapted from gaming all have an increasing
role to play in building design, particularly
in how spatial information is communicated
to stakeholders and clients. As systems
integration and performance metrics assume
more and more critical roles within the design
and construction process, comprehensive
visualisation platforms will be a competitive
advantage for AEC industry firms.
Case Study: Augmented Reality
Location / Business: Portola, CA.
Meta for commercial use. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
(RMIT) Design hub is a purpose-built space
where students, researchers and industry
experts can collaborate on discussions,
presentations and events aimed at promoting
industry-specific exploration and enabling
use of sophisticated forms of data visualisation and digital
mockup in the aerospace industry, and the iterative, process-
driven design paradigms of the automotive industry. Design
and construction of buildings, as well as communications
and management of those processes, will continue to benefit
from cross-pollination from related industries and an influx of
data-driven tools from nontraditional sources.
Location / Business: Melbourne, Australia.
RMIT for public use.
The continued development and standardisation of
Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology will
enable designers from different disciplines and phases of
involvement in the design process to work together in an
increasingly seamless manner. Hard datasets and lessons
learned from successful projects will be increasingly
available for adaptation to future work through these trends in
digital workflow and collaboration.
The modeling capacity of BIM will
 be supplemented
by a greater degree 
of integration amongst disciplines and
design phases in the next ten years. Cloud-based information
storage and subscription-based software will transform the
way that design teams work across geographies and project
phases. Distributed, near-realtime communication between
design team members, clients and stakeholders, as well as the
prevalence of comprehensive data visualisation technologies
and highly portable system models will streamline the design,
construction and operation stages of future projects.
Integrated Design
Over the past decade, Building Design-related software
products have focussed on leveraging increased
computational power for the purpose of analysis and
simulation. In the near future, with the centre of gravity in
area-specific software development will shift to integration;
highly mobile, easily accessible, clearly visualised data will
be available to more building project stakeholders, across
more platforms and devices, than ever before, allowing new
efficiencies from design to operation.
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connections between pure research projects
and commercial implementation.
As technological innovation continues to
be a critical competitive differentiator among
AEC industry firms, collaborative research
programmes and spaces like RMIT’s Design
Hub provide a valuable forum for working
engineers and designers to invigorate their
practice with fresh ideas from a range of
generations and disciplines. Industrial-
academic partnerships of this sort can allow
for unparalleled cross-pollination of ideas,
provide rigorous technical critique, and serve
as a valuable recruitment pool for talent.
Building Design 2020
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