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Space Group

Architecture News - Oct 21, 2008 - 17:31   4915 views

The only 5 rated architecture-based research group in the UKThe Space group is led by Professor Bill Hillier and involves seven key members of staff. Their activities havebeen supported since 1996 by three major EPSRC awards, enhancedwith substantial industrial funding: the `Intelligent Architecture`project {1995-97}, the Virtual Reality Centre for the BuiltEnvironment {1997-2000} and a £0.5 million PlatformAward {2000-04, recently extended by £400k over 5 yearsto 2009}. Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment is ajoint initiative between the Bartlett, the Centrefor Advanced Spatial Analysis, and four other UCL departments.It was established with a Foresight Challenge Award of £2.3million, plus co-funding from 16 industrial partners. TheDirector is Professor Alan Penn. The Centre`s purpose is todevelop digital technologies in architecture, construction,urban planning, retail and transport. Among other achievements,two new techniques have been developed. The first is `visibilitygraph analysis` of digital models of buildings, which makesit possible to quantify what is visible and accessible fromany chosen position. The second is micro-simulation of pedestrianmovement by means of agents with visual awareness{Pedestrian modelling with spatially-aware agents}. These techniques are being applied in internationalprojects, as for example the Simstore {retail simulation}project for Sainsbury`s and Procter and Gamble. The EC-fundedTOWER: Theatre of work enabling relationships project has to do with promoting networkedinterfaces to share real-world activity patterns between distributedproject teams. Joint projects with the Bartlett`s Managementgroup are concerned with refurbishment of occupied buildings,and virtual construction; and there is collaboration withthe lighting research of the Environment group in the CANDLEand `Urban lights` projects. The Centre`s VR facilitieshave been extended recently with the installation of a £1.8million CAVE {Computer Aided Virtual Environment} shared withUCL Computer Science and funded by JREI.
www.space.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/