Collaborative Design in Immersive Networked Spaces

The Hybrid Lab project is led by Design Academy Eindhoven, working with project partners Muthesius Kunstochschule in Germany, The New Raw in the Netherlands, and UAU Project in Poland. The research initiative is supported in part by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.

The Hybrid Lab project is led by Design Academy Eindhoven, working with project partners Muthesius Kunstochschule in Germany, The New Raw in the Netherlands, and UAU Project in Poland. The research initiative is supported in part by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.

Dr. Biscoe commented: “The Hybrid Lab team will explore and establish new ways by which designers can leverage the affordances of technological networks and immersive environments to improve geographically dispersed collaboration and communication. The aim is that designers will be able to collaborate across locations, with other team members and clients, without the need to travel more. This will be achieved by working in locally accessed shared immersive environments that are distributed across the network, ones where design process and client locations come together in real-time for all members of the team.”

Over the next two years, the Hybrid Lab research project will deploy a networked XR (eXtended Reality) environment in which a series of design-build challenges will be executed by our teams and members of the public. We aim to design and test a real-time platform for future design scenarios, one where distanced collaborations between researchers, designers and clients are made easier and greener, with higher quality and waste free results.

Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) will provide the networked XR environment platform (which can be considered a private “Metaverse”, or “Intraverse” environment) and knowledge around the use of such technologies. Muthesius University (Kiel) will advise and conduct research concerning social interaction and identity in collaborative immersive environments. UAU Project (Warsaw) and The New Raw (Rotterdam) are design studios who work extensively with parametric design methodologies and 3D printing: each studio will develop and test new “urban furniture” in immersive Digital Twins that are hosted within the Hybrid Lab networked environment. The outcome of the design collaborations will then be manufactured and situated in physical space.

To read more on the Hybrid Lab please visit the website.