Sydney architect Rana Abboud won a NAWIC Scholarship in 2013 to investigate the opportunities and obstacles for Augmented Reality in the practice of architecture. She reports for ArchitectureAU on her key research findings.

Augmented Reality's potential for Architecture is huge. "AR" is any system that overlays, or 'augments,' the real world with digital information that seemingly co-exists. Today's AR applications hint at a future to come: virtual furniture may be overlaid in real time to check its size and appearance in a room; 'see-through' walls on a construction site allow builders to view pipes and mechanical ducting behind; and overlays of past and future buildings render the city a canvas for virtual data. As tech giants race to release wearable interfaces for ever greater augmentation of the physical world, the number of worldwide users consuming AR via portable media devices is expected to exceed 1 billion users by 2020.

As recipient of the 2013 International Women's Day Scholarship awarded by the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), I recently researched the Opportunities and Obstacles for Augmented Reality across key phases of architectural practice. My focus was on a subset of AR known as Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR), which applies the concept of AR in truly mobile settings, away from special-purpose work areas.

With MAR, displays are portable, and range from smartphones, to tablets, to wearable Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs). My intent was to identify high-level uses for Mobile AR across key architectural phases, and explain the challenges currently preventing MAR's uptake by the Australian architecture profession. My focus question was: "What are the opportunities and obstacles for mobile AR in key phases of architectural practice – namely, design, construction, and post-completion?"

Gartner's Hype Cycle with Augmented Reality overlay.

The AR trail took me on a study tour across North America, Europe, and Oceania. With the support of NAWIC and Architectus, I met with AEC industry leaders, AR developers, software researchers, academics, and pioneers of AR in construction applications worldwide. I discovered that Augmented Reality had reached the pinnacle of news media hype in 2011, and that its users were now hurtling towards the 'Trough of Disillusionment.' I tried on Head-Mounted Displays, and found out the Google Glass was not true AR. I also uncovered a broad spectrum of Use Cases and AR prototypes relevant to architecture.

Opportunities: Design

AR can overlay a real site with a virtual design at full-scale. A growing number of AR developers and visualisation providers now offer AR platforms that enable 'walking tours' of a virtual building, from early design through to construction. Those from backgrounds outside the construction industry often struggle to decode technical planning documents, or interpret 2-D drawings to understand their 3-D implications. MAR applications promise to bypass such 'coding' and 'translation' models of spatial communication, and more intuitively convey the intended appearance, scale, and features of a proposed design.

By using virtual components to stand in for physical objects, AR can save on the fabrication and material costs of real-world prototypes.

AR platforms can also isolate individual elements within a spatial scheme for presentation at full scale. By using virtual components to stand in for physical objects, AR can save on the fabrication and material costs of real-world prototypes. Such applications are useful in clash detection, to visually detect overlaps between proposed virtual content and real world elements. Today's commercial applications in this area are limited to mass-manufactured objects, whose modular nature provides a compelling business case for AR platforms that communicate scale.

MAR platforms can also augment physical models and drawings with unlimited virtual content. The most common augmentation of presentation media today is when a paper drawing, such as a 2D plan, becomes the marker for a 3D model overlay. But the value-add of AR is in communicating information that other media cannot, such as 4D content (information with a time component). Overlays need not be limited to visual applications either, as AR can draw on other senses to communicate elements of a scheme, such as the acoustics within a space.

With AR, multiple users may share the same physical space and perceive the 'spatial presence' of a digital object, making it an ideal medium for collaborative problem solving.

But while the most familiar uses in design today are in design visualisation, (such as with the Augmented Australia 1914-2014 exhibition planned for Venice), AR will increasingly inform the design process itself. With AR, multiple users may share the same physical space and perceive the 'spatial presence' of a digital object, making it an ideal medium for collaborative problem solving. MAR applications promise to bring the designer into more direct contact with the building site, allowing building designers to quickly contextualise and review their designs in situ.

Opportunities: Construction
