Abstract 5: “Augmented Spaces” and Transforming Spatial Experience (ACCEPTED FOR POSTER)

It is a common topic of study and discussion in almost all research areas that the growing impact of information technologies created a ground-breaking and inevitable shift in social, cultural, psychological and technical understanding between modern man and the world surrounding him. The affects of this paradigm shift is considered too extensive that a contextual fragmentation in the foci of professional and academic research disciplines is unavoidable and necessary. While communication and media theorists are dealing with the converge in media technologies and its affects in social and personal interaction; cultural studies domain focuses more on the changing social structures, the enactment of power relations, gender issues, and such. In this wide ranging and promising new field of research, design research (including architecture, industrial design, interior design, i.e.) seem to focus significantly on two critical areas of investigation: the affects of information technologies on design processes and the designed product/space, and how to integrate digital technologies into everyday life through designed entities. Nevertheless, these considerations seem to be strongly interrelated today, since the intelligent spaces, smart objects and information infrastructures surrounding us cannot be thought separately from the processes and technologies that created them. In general, design and everyday life can be considered to evolve in a mutual progression, the developments in which affect all the participants. That is to say: as the information technologies are integrated rapidly and seamlessly into world we live/communicate/interact/consume in, the definition and context of design (in general) has to be updated, too.

This article intends to focus on three major themes: new forms of environments that are created by the convergence of conventional physical spaces and the cyberspace; affects of this convergence in people’s perception and cognition of space and spatial experience; and finally, changing paradigms in contemporary architecture with the integration of cyberspace (and virtual environments) as a fundamental element of built environment.

The general aim of this study is not to provide exact and definitive answers to these considerations, but to evoke some of the essential discussions on the changing structures of design-based professions and their enactments in contemporary societies. For this purpose, a socio-cultural research perspective is also necessary in addition to general theoretical perspectives on design and architecture. Ultimately, attracting attention to the emerging need for a multi-disciplinary and technologically-updated research vision in contemporary architecture (and design, in general) would a satisfying outcome of this study, and an inspiring prequel to further studies on the subject matter.