Thermal VR

Thermal VR is an innovative system that integrates thermal feedback into virtual reality environments to enhance architectural design processes. By combining heat emitters with VR goggles, the system allows the user to experience both the thermal and visual aspects of architectural designs, offering a more immersive and intuitive evaluation. This approach, tested in virtual office settings, demonstrates the potential for climate-aware design.

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Virtual Office Room. Source: Chiu (2024)

Virtual Office Room. Source: Chiu (2024)

Virtual Reality for Design

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Corresponding Author:
- Dr Lars Grobe, grobe@arch.ethz.ch

Publications: 
- Chen Chiu (2024). "Thermal VR: Climate-Aware Designing with Real-Time Thermal Feedback". Chair of Architecture & Building Systems, ETH Zurich. Master Thesis.

Virtual Reality (VR) as design platform in architecture offers unprecedented levels of visual immersion. However, we really only use one of our many bodily senses: the sense of sight. According to the philosophy of embodiment, intelligence was only formed due to a direct link to the physical world via sensors and actuators (Pfeifer & Bongard, 2006). It is questionable whether our arguably primitive approach to designing buildings with mostly relying on what we see on the computer screen, plans or through VR goggles truly exploits our full creative potential.

Looking at the brain regions responsible for our different senses, we can observe that the sense of touch occupies similarly large parts as the sense of sight, and our other senses obviously also are integral parts of how we perceive space. How would building designs change if we had real-time interactive feedback on the haptics of concrete surfaces; if we could smell the timber of load bearing structures; if we could hear sound propagation of an orchestra in a concert hall; if we could feel the soothing summer breeze on a shaded patio and feel the warm sunlight in winter coming through a window? How would our designs change if we could sense all of that already while drafting our architectural visions?

User in front of the

User in front of the "heat wall". Image: A/S ETHZ

Using all the senses!

To explore this research question, we propose “Thermal VR” . The utilization of VR in architecture is being studied by various research groups already (Milovanovic et al. 2017). The additional element we propose is to extend VR from being a merely audio-visual experience to also using the other bodily senses. Specifically, heat emitters will be spatially distributed in a VR room, such that environmental/climatic factors would be perceived by the VR designer and the impact on thermal comfort of design decisions could be experienced in real-time. Physics and machine learning based simulation models, as well as decision support concepts from computational intelligence (optimization and generative design) will be coupled with Thermal VR.


This project will contribute to the development of future innovative decision making processes in architecture. The global environmental crisis with climate change as its inexorable consequence is demanding for more sustainability in the built environment as one of climate change’s major drivers. In Switzerland, particularly, this means a drastic increase of mean temperatures and overheating risk in building – as can already be undeniably experienced on summer days in many buildings not designed for heat waves. However, thermal comfort is one of the major factors determining health, wellbeing and productivity in work spaces (Parsons, 2003)! The question arises whether the thermal comfort of many buildings would be better, had they been designed with a platform such as Thermal VR?

We hypothesize a drastic rethinking of the quality of architectural spaces when designers start using thermal sensation integrated into their decision making. Combined with ever increasing visual quality of computer graphics and 3D sound systems, a fully immersive, experimental design environment will be created with Thermal VR that captures the full spectrum of what the human body experiences, thus supporting a much richer creative process stimulating all senses and fostering designs that are truly environmental and contextual.

References:

  • Pfeifer & Bongard (2006). How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: a New View of Intelligence.
  • Milovanovic et al. (2017). Virtual and Augmented Reality in Architectural Design and Education: An Immersive Multimodal Platform to Support Architectural Pedagogy. 17th International Conference, CAAD Futures 2017, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2017
  • Ken Parsons (2003) Human Thermal Environments: The Effects of Hot, Moderate, and Cold Environments on Human Health, Comfort and Performance

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