Representation of architecture through virtual media

How can architects, and architecture in general, benefit from the emerging digital media and tools such as virtual reality, eye tracking, EEG analysis and the new insights gained from neurology in relation to perception in the past decades? This essay will discuss recent research into these fields exemplified in the development of an engaging representational model using a combination of feedback logging mechanisms in virtual reality to indicate the quality of universal design and of architecture. During the last five years, a series of experiments have led us to the prototyping an architectural transformation and design tool, with the intent to extract both the feedback of behaviour and emotion using a digital architectural representational model. Combining digital scans of existing architecture with suggestions of architectural transformations, allows the prototype tool to provide a more informed and detailed basis for decision making. With this ambition of working in the virtual digital realm and at the same time investigate and stress the importance of the human mind engaging with the representation of architecture with all its floors, walls, and atmospheres, it can be a complicated issue to establish a common frame of reference explaining why certain aspects in a representation are preferred and others are not. This use of architectural representational models eventually holds the potential to further improve the experience and quality of architecture and architectural transformation.