Transforming architecture with AR

Have you ever wondered whether your layout will fit inside a building or have you struggled to envision if a building would fit into a specific space?

These challenges may scare you off from buying or hiring a building. That’s why I tried to make the decision easier by creating an AR (Augmented Reality) experience in which an individual can pre-watch the desired building with the planned layout.

In this post, I’ll share the journey of creating this experience, the technology behind it, and how it can be used.

The problem

When people are trying to buy or rent a building there are two common pain points.

1. Does the building fit in my available space? It is not always easy to determine if a building will fit in the available space, and there are a lot of variables to be considered which can easily be overlooked. If you place a building there needs to be enough space to actually place te building, can the building get all the way on your terrain. You have to think of space between the soon-to-be-placed building and existing architecture, and you have to think of fire escape routes. Not only the width of the building is to be considered, also the height of it.  Measuring dimensions is one thing, visualising a whole building in context is entirely different.
2. Does my desired layout fit inside the building? It can be difficult to organize the inside to your needs. Whether it is setting up tables for an event, or workstation for an office. It can be difficult to get a feeling of how much space there will actually be to walk around.

AR models for real-life and layout visualization

To address these challenges I created an AR tool that lets individuals:

1. View a building in real size in their environment. Using Augmented Reality, an individual can place a 3D model of the desired building inside the location to see if it will fit in the available space. The building is tethered to the ground and people can walk through it, using their phone, to get a feeling of the available space and see the thought of layout.
2. View the building in a small scale. The individual can interact with a miniaturised version of the building to visualize the space of the interior layout. The user can view the building from all sides and see if the desired layout fits inside the building.

How does it work

The usage is pretty straightforward.

1. Select a building. The user choses a building and layout from a selection.
2. Activate AR. The user can project an AR version of their desired building in their environment. By clicking the link and accepting the terms, the user can activate the AR mode by clicking the “watch in AR” button.
3. Switch to a scaled model. By refreshing the page, the user will automatically move back to a scaled down version of the model.

The technology behind the project

For the 3D models I use Blender 3D. For this project (until now) I have created 4 Blender projects:

1. Line 1 of buildings, 12 buildings in different lengths.
2. Line 2 of buildings, 4 buildings (wider than line 1) in different lengths.
3. Loose assets which can be used in a variety of different layouts.
4. An empty project in which the buildings and layouts can be assembled before sending it to a user.

For the AR experience it took me a few tries to figure out what the best approach would be, and I still believe I haven’t found the exact right one yet. I didn’t want to have to fors the user to use an app, so I used an open VSC platform (Visual Studio Code). By using this, I was able to fit the project to my desired outcome and the user can view the building inside their Google browser, by opening a personalised link.

Why does it matter

By creating an AR experience, questions can be taken away from the user. Customers can confidently choose a building which will fit in their available space and serves their needs. This solution enhances a customers experience and removes the chance for misunderstandings. 

By making the project interactive, I hope to make the decision to choose a building more enjoyable for potential customers.

What’s next

I’m continuing to enhance this tool. For now this project can only be used in a smaller scale and with a small amount of different links. I want to bring this project to a much larger scale, with which an individual can choose a building and layout from different examples.

For now the asset library isn’t big and only contains the most used products for a school or office. By creating and adding more assets to the library the user can change the layout to whatever they desire.