Winnipeg: Speculation of Augmented Reality in Outdoor Urban Space

Student Name: Shihan Hu

School: University of Manitoba

Degree Program: M. Landscape Architecture

Location of Project: Winnipeg, MB

Year of Project: 2018-2019

Brief Description of Project:

This practicum explores the possibility of applying emerging technology in the field of augmented reality (AR) to urban landscape settings. It examines current applications of AR—primarily in indoor, building-related and urban street locations—and transfers them to an exclusively outdoor location. The chosen location—along a re-purposed rail line crossing the Assiniboine River between Polo Park and Omand’s Creek in Winnipeg—is seen as part of a possible route for a future citywide light rail system. It is re-conceived as a place within which people may experience otherwise-invisible natural processes in action. These processes include the rise and fall of the river over time, the growth of the riparian forest and other vegetation, the roots of trees. The practicum closes by positing other possible applications of AR in the perception of natural and human-made landscapes. Throughout the progress of investigating form and experience, the practicum constantly seeks to expand the notion of ‘landscape‘ in the mixed environment of physical and virtual. This leads to the set up of some preliminary design principles and speculations in defining a unique domain of research, which shall serve to further understand the landscape in this future and how people could dwell upon it.