Empathy in Point-Clouds [EIPC] is a faculty-student research project seeking to redefine the terms for creating radically accessible and inclusive architecture. From buildings and environments, to digital infrastructure and urban technologies, the EIPC team utilizes the 3D gaming platform, Unreal Engine, to develop project-based work-flows, point-clouds using LiDAR scanners, live performance motion-capture animation, and immersive technologies that locate empathy within the design process. We are using the UM campus to prototype, test, and validate complex design methodologies to navigate equally complex and imaginative worlding processes.
Unreal Engine provides a single control and 3D data management plane to reposition architecture and speculative design. The meta-verse, or immersive internet, is an ideal construction site to reposition architecture within the ethics of Spatial Justice. In contrast to LiDAR applications used to identify environmental threats in on-line gaming scenarios, or the autonomous vehicle sector, EIPC creates spatial counter-narratives that demonstrate how we can design architecture through data curation that animates the urban imaginary – vividly.
Student Team: Sang Won Kang, Xin Li, Matthew Priskorn, Nicole Tooley, James Benjey, Grieta Blaka, Eden Boes, Andrew Borders, Jie Sophia Chen, Dak Daruri, Rishad Hasan, Heming Huang, Patrice Johnson, Yipeng Lin, Ting-Yu Ling, Jiangyue Mao, Edward Rapa.
Sponsored by: UM ArtsEngine and Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, with support from the Duderstadt Center’s Ground Connections and Emerging Technologies Group; the Center for Academic Innovation XR Lab, and FARO Technologies [LiDAR].
