Designing the Virtual Reality School of the Future
Over the summer of 2018, I lived in Clarksdale, MS doing work for the Shifting Rhythms project sponsored by Olin College's Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship class. I lived with Vince, the CEO of a local virtual reality company named Lobaki. A few weeks into my stay, Vince asked me if I was familiar with the book and movie, Ready Player One. In this book, students go to school on a virtual reality planet where everything can be as opulent as possible. Field trips that take you all around the world become an everyday experience. A client had just come to Vince and asked him to design the school from Ready Player One. As soon as I expressed interest in the project, it fell in my hands.
Throughout June, July, and August, I put in over a hundred hours into designing the virtual reality school of the future. I used SketchUp, in part because of my familiarity with it for architectural design purposes, and also because the models are easy to load into a VR experience. I was given almost entirely free reign over the project, occasionally consulting with Vince on his own preference for various features I had in mind. The first point of confusion I remember hitting was deciding how to design a virtual reality classroom for a number of different disciplines. I settled on creating large stage-like portals that would feature individual mini-VR experiences specific to the classroom's subject—they would essentially serve as the gateways for field trips anywhere in the world, or perhaps even throughout the universe.
The school building includes classrooms for anatomy, physics, astronomy, math, music, art/design, English, and history, each with their own unique ideas for VR field trip experiences. In addition to the classrooms, the school also features a large social cafeteria, a computer lab with overhead-screen chairs and individual work pods, an auditorium, a rec room inspired by the Star Trek Holodeck (at Vince's request), and a number of secret lounges. I wanted to create a space that was conducive to learning curriculum in innovative ways while simultaneously being futuristic and a bit whimsical. The entire campus occupies roughly 23 acres and also features tiered waterfalls, bunkers built into the hillside, a waterfall, a canyon with a rope bridge, a labyrinth, several outdoor classroom pods, and an observation tower. Although it was an entirely new experience for me, creating an outdoor environment in such detail was critical to the overall experience a student should have when visiting the school—the space should allow for exploration and some sense of nature to accompany it, and not be entirely focused on academics.
This project was, by far, the largest CAD or design project I have ever taken on. With the exception of the trees, I designed each component of the project from scratch, down to the individual chairs and tables. I learned that I have a tendency to overdesign things at times; the project became almost too large to work on and ended up having almost nine million polygons. Nevertheless, I found it extremely rewarding to devote so much time and energy to a project over which I had so much control. Vince and his team presented the project to the clients the week after I left Clarksdale and secured $10M in funding for its continued development. The next step in the process will be adding animations, enriching the textures and lighting, and creating the individual field trip experiences. My summer work with Lobaki inspired a fascinating foray into the realm of architectural visualization, which is an area I'd love to continue to explore in the future.
Throughout June, July, and August, I put in over a hundred hours into designing the virtual reality school of the future. I used SketchUp, in part because of my familiarity with it for architectural design purposes, and also because the models are easy to load into a VR experience. I was given almost entirely free reign over the project, occasionally consulting with Vince on his own preference for various features I had in mind. The first point of confusion I remember hitting was deciding how to design a virtual reality classroom for a number of different disciplines. I settled on creating large stage-like portals that would feature individual mini-VR experiences specific to the classroom's subject—they would essentially serve as the gateways for field trips anywhere in the world, or perhaps even throughout the universe.
The school building includes classrooms for anatomy, physics, astronomy, math, music, art/design, English, and history, each with their own unique ideas for VR field trip experiences. In addition to the classrooms, the school also features a large social cafeteria, a computer lab with overhead-screen chairs and individual work pods, an auditorium, a rec room inspired by the Star Trek Holodeck (at Vince's request), and a number of secret lounges. I wanted to create a space that was conducive to learning curriculum in innovative ways while simultaneously being futuristic and a bit whimsical. The entire campus occupies roughly 23 acres and also features tiered waterfalls, bunkers built into the hillside, a waterfall, a canyon with a rope bridge, a labyrinth, several outdoor classroom pods, and an observation tower. Although it was an entirely new experience for me, creating an outdoor environment in such detail was critical to the overall experience a student should have when visiting the school—the space should allow for exploration and some sense of nature to accompany it, and not be entirely focused on academics.
This project was, by far, the largest CAD or design project I have ever taken on. With the exception of the trees, I designed each component of the project from scratch, down to the individual chairs and tables. I learned that I have a tendency to overdesign things at times; the project became almost too large to work on and ended up having almost nine million polygons. Nevertheless, I found it extremely rewarding to devote so much time and energy to a project over which I had so much control. Vince and his team presented the project to the clients the week after I left Clarksdale and secured $10M in funding for its continued development. The next step in the process will be adding animations, enriching the textures and lighting, and creating the individual field trip experiences. My summer work with Lobaki inspired a fascinating foray into the realm of architectural visualization, which is an area I'd love to continue to explore in the future.