Virtual Reality: The Immersive Bridge Connecting Architects & Building Product Manufacturers

The AEC industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors worldwide – and the nature of its output is remarkably impactful and long-lasting. Since the AEC industry functions through a complex network of interlinked and interdependent processes carried out by different professional teams, it is essential to create seamless and convenient systems as well as future-ready and resilient ones.

Virtual Reality offers a power-packed, immersive solution that is interactive and true to scale, delivering a revolutionary design experience to the entire AEC industry. Virtual Reality offers a better and faster way for decision making that is affordable and economically efficient. It is a great way to communicate the user experience thus bridging the gap between client expectations and understanding and the final architectural product.

As the building industry navigates the paradigm shift towards technology, Virtual Reality has great potential to offer. The process of selecting and acquiring the right building products for architects has often been tedious, with prolonged periods of design modifications and site visits. Through Virtual Reality, brands can create digital twins of their products that allow architects and clients to experience the products conveniently within the safety of their homes. Virtual reality also allows for the integration of these products into the design, to scale. With virtual collaboration plugged into the same, various stakeholders can collaborate and pick the right products for the design efficiently. Product categories and catalogues can be generated, allowing users to explore multiple offerings.

This significantly eliminates the need for physical meetings, models or mock-ups, making it economically efficient for the building product manufacturers and sustainable for the environment. Through a cloud-enabled collaborative technology, building product manufacturers, and vendors can reach every designer independent of their geographical location or scale. Not only do digital tools provide greater visibility to building product manufactures but it also leads to a better understanding of the product and its application into the design.

The true to scale real-time experience reduces visual inconsistencies leading to uniform visualisation instead of varying interpretations, leaving no room for errors. This dramatically reduces the decision-making time as it reduces the need for in-person meetings, tedious design modifications processes and erroneous selection of products. Immersive and collaborative technology like Virtual Reality can bring accuracy in functioning and communication amongst all stakeholders, offering a comprehensive technological solution that ensures that all the stakeholders share the same understanding of the products to be used.

The AEC industry is formed by a wide range of stakeholders that collaborate and collectively create our built environment. Therefore, exhausting physical meetings at various stages of the design process and tedious design modifications form a dominant part of most work-flows. However, through the pandemic, the already exhausted work system has been further strained, bringing the industry to a standstill. Since architecture is so time-intensive, it is essential to rebuild our design process sustainably and efficiently.