Can You Traverse It? On Using Immersion as a Validation Tool When Learning to Produce Three Dimensional Inhabitable Figures

If we consider that “creating architecture, as viewed from our area of interest, consists in the production of three-dimensional inhabitable figures” (Burgaleta 2019) and we center our teaching around that fact, we will eventually be in need of some sort of procedure to provide our apprentices with the tools to verify that the spaces they produce – said three dimensional figures – are inhabitable. In this paper we relate a sequence of classes we setup as an extended assignment. Apprentices are initiated in (1) the production of three-dimensional spaces using cheap, open and conventional graphical techniques – which have low complexity and favor imaginary exploration of space – and (2) the actual validation of the produced space habitability through interactive immersion. We favor a working scheme based on the intersection of traditional and digital graphical techniques to facilitate the creative process. The outlined validation procedure is accessible, easy and does not get in the way, that is: it has a small learning curve that enables its use by apprentices with very little previous knowledge of 3D applications. In this way, they can concentrate on the production of three-dimensional spaces without the associated complexity of realistic rendering and set up of interactive 3D simulations