Category: Must-Read

Must-read introductory articles.

Osaka ’70 on tour!

Post author By T.E.A.M.
Post date March 1, 2021

So, Maurizio Sacripanti’s reconstructed architecture is finally on tour! If you own an Oculus Quest you will soon be able to download the experience, if not, we can schedule a special VR session and bring it to you – during sessions, we strictly adhere to anti-COVID-19 protective measures.

It’s been 50 years since the conception of Maurizio Sacripanti’s project, never built, of the Italian pavilion for the Osaka Expo.

With T.E.A.M. we made a detailed reconstruction of the 3D model based on interviews with the design team and the study of the architect’s documents, with the aim of experiencing the building in VR with the Oculus Quest.

For our lab, Osaka ‘70 is a research tool that allows us to investigate the relationship between VR and architecture, in particular the relationship with kinetic elements. For the visitor it is a way to explore a never built project – one which is nevertheless fundamental for the history of Italian architecture – and enjoy a total experience of the space as Sacripanti imagined it.

Piattaforma Chronicles I

Post author By John Volpato
Post date November 9, 2020

Everything started with a simple exercise:

“[…] please build a basic 3D game experience with a 2100 mm diameter circular platform suspended in a vacuum. On this platform identify three circular areas of 600mm diameter each, which we will call A, B and C. Rules of the game: the player is free to move on the platform, each of the three circular areas is interactive; each interaction is activated with the presence of the player above the area itself; each interaction triggers an event […]”

That’s what we asked all the aspiring T.E.A.M. project participants. This 3D experience later evolved, becoming the “Piattaforma Zero”: our very first act in the study and research for the representation and manipulation of mathematically correct dynamic design elements in Virtual Reality.

Frontiers in Design Human Experience Human Spaces Must-Read

Putting Time in a (virtual) Box

Post author By Valentina Temporin
Post date November 3, 2020

“I despair not that, even here, in this region of Three Dimensions, your Lordship’s art may make the Fourth Dimension visible to me; just as in the Land of Two Dimensions my Teacher’s skill would fain have opened the eyes of his blind servant to the invisible presence of a Third Dimension, though I saw it not.”
Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland

A couple of years ago, a client commissioned us to design a small exhibition pavilion to promote the wine products of his territory, and at the same time to draw attention to the region and its artistic and natural beauty.

The exhibition structure required maximum flexibility: it had to be suitable both for indoor and outdoor installation, it had to be easily assembled and disassembled – and therefore easily transportable – and it should impact the visitor with its attractive aesthetics.
Given the requests and the temporary nature of the set up, we imagined applying to the project the studies on kinetic structures under development within Poplab. These studies explore the idea of a variable structure architecture, able to modify its shape according to parameters related to the external environment, and, above all, to the interaction with the user.