Shape Grammars Reality (SGr) : computing in the real world

Abstract

As a rule, architects calculate, draw, annotate, write, diagram, model, map, photograph, animate, or simply visualize objects, spaces, territories, and processes. They make visual and verbal representations compiling ideas that they have "seen" from direct sensory observations and past memories. Shape Grammars Reality (SGR) allows architects to apply design rules in the real world, by utilizing the idea of calculating with shapes. The current applications of the computational theory of Shape Grammars use primarily sketching on tracing paper with conventional tools. SGR proposes a user interface on the intersection between Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and eye-tracking research. By using Virtual Reality headsets, a designer is able to brainstorm-draft in real time, by applying basic schemas and transformation rules in the smartphone' SGr app. The combination of shape rules and Augmented Reality of this thesis is unique since the current design tools within the ecology of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications are not rule-based. The designer explores possibilities by inventing his/her own library of schemas through seeing. Given the fact that seeing is by definition a non-linear process, SGR allows the emergence of shapes in design via real time interaction between the reality of a space and the design intention of the user.