Virtual models of architectural spaces: methods for exploration, representation and interaction through narratives and visual grammars

Abstract: In this paper we aim to present a conceptual framework for virtual creation, exploration, and representation of architectural space. This framework will allow us to establish a method that will drive the viewer along a path, intended by the researcher, to experience, interact and get feedback of spaces in study, through linear or interactive narratives.Space virtual computational representation tools have evolved over the last decades and are now providing advanced new tools from gaming, AI and VR real-time complex fictional environments creation, depiction and interaction. From interior spaces to planetary systems, replicated or fictional, sets for all kinds of computer simulation models with immersive possibilities can be created and explored.In a linear visual narrative of a 3D animation the viewer is carried, without choice, by the flow of visual narrative storytelling, through several spaces, events, conclusions, expectations, premonitions, anticipations, empathy and characters and environments, fictional readings in dreamlike narratives, where reality and fantasy can be blended. In an interactive tale storytelling and script, the linearity would become in theoretically infinite lines of possible events and plots, with diverse endings, in which a narrative story line diverges in multiple plots.Having a set of formal parameterized elements within a grammatical lexicon that constitute and methodological approach to an architectural object in a study, it is intended to look at methods to experience, interact and get feedback of spaces in study, through visual multiple narratives, linear or interactive, being immersed or not. All these narrative approaches imply a script and visual grammars, storyline, and plot, where the player looks or travels through a fictional space, in a lived and experiential way.For conception and planning as for studying or research in the architectural field, this is an area of expertise to explore, as these new graphic computing tools can pursue new approaches, using several methods available to apply in each research, to provide analysis breakthroughs.

Keywords: Architectural Virtual Representation, Visual Narratives Grammars, Immersion and Interaction, Virtual Exploration Methods

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001935

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