APPLICATION OF IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE EARLY DESIGN STAGE IN ARCHITECTURE EDUCATION - A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract This paper reviews existing research on the use of immersive technologies, Virtual Reality in particular, in various stages of the architectural design process. Nine research papers were systematically reviewed and analyzed. They were filtered down by using the keywords: ‘Virtual/Augmented Reality, Architectural Education, Gravity Sketch, Unity and Virtual Environments’ from two main databases that focus on digital and computer-aided design research: Cumulative Index about publications in Computer Aided Architectural Design (CuminCAD) and Elsevier's abstract and citation database (Scopus). The selection of papers was filtered down based on relevant approaches which investigate architectural design, creative thinking and teaching methodology using immersive technologies. Another criterion applied to the filtering process of the research papers is the exploration and integration process of new tools and overlapping external software to aid the existing workflow of the user. Our findings explore the evolution of immersive tools to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of virtual reality-based software and hardware, as a creative development tool in the field of education and practice. This paper also proposes a novel teaching methodology that incorporates immersive technologies in the early design phase of architectural education.