Representing Built Environments
with Digital Tools: Problems with Human
Perception
M. W˛ asowicz
Abstract The idea of sustainable development in architecture focuses on health care
and environmental protection, but not only: Building a healthy human-environment
relationship also plays an important role. Demands of sustainable development are
fulfilled through ensuring a general sense of well-being, which comprises permanence, safety, and comfort of adapting the built environment to human perceptual
abilities and needs. In the twentieth century, research on how the built environment is perceived had gained much attention. Recent studies have applied digital
tools in the research process, and sooner than later virtual reality simulations will
become an essential tool and an important reference in the science of architecture.
Data extracted from virtual models combined with interactive feed-back will be
used to learn viewers’ understanding of architecture and its surroundings. Until now,
researchers have primarily focused on tracing observers’ visual dimension of perception and estimating measurable spatial qualities rather than on simulating perceptual
experience in real-life contexts. Combined with another problem of human cognitive
abilities—that their many different faces reach far beyond visual observations—such
an approach to simulation wanders too far from the reality of the build environment.
This paper reviews what we known about observing architecture in illusions created
in digital environments.
Keywords Digital tool · Virtual model · Perception
1 Introduction
Maintenance and continuity of resources, and the quality of human life—these are
the two most common contexts considered along with sustainability, but not the
only ones. Another treats ecology as the science of relationships between people
M. W˛ asowicz (B)
Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning,
Opole University of Technology, Opole, Poland
e-mail: m.wasowicz@po.edu.pl
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Z. Zembaty et al. (eds.), Environmental Challenges in Civil
Engineering, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 122,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63879-5_13
167
with Digital Tools: Problems with Human
Perception
M. W˛ asowicz
Abstract The idea of sustainable development in architecture focuses on health care
and environmental protection, but not only: Building a healthy human-environment
relationship also plays an important role. Demands of sustainable development are
fulfilled through ensuring a general sense of well-being, which comprises permanence, safety, and comfort of adapting the built environment to human perceptual
abilities and needs. In the twentieth century, research on how the built environment is perceived had gained much attention. Recent studies have applied digital
tools in the research process, and sooner than later virtual reality simulations will
become an essential tool and an important reference in the science of architecture.
Data extracted from virtual models combined with interactive feed-back will be
used to learn viewers’ understanding of architecture and its surroundings. Until now,
researchers have primarily focused on tracing observers’ visual dimension of perception and estimating measurable spatial qualities rather than on simulating perceptual
experience in real-life contexts. Combined with another problem of human cognitive
abilities—that their many different faces reach far beyond visual observations—such
an approach to simulation wanders too far from the reality of the build environment.
This paper reviews what we known about observing architecture in illusions created
in digital environments.
Keywords Digital tool · Virtual model · Perception
1 Introduction
Maintenance and continuity of resources, and the quality of human life—these are
the two most common contexts considered along with sustainability, but not the
only ones. Another treats ecology as the science of relationships between people
M. W˛ asowicz (B)
Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning,
Opole University of Technology, Opole, Poland
e-mail: m.wasowicz@po.edu.pl
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Z. Zembaty et al. (eds.), Environmental Challenges in Civil
Engineering, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 122,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63879-5_13
167