IHEARTBLOB - 2021
iheartblob is an award-winning mixed reality architecture studio and research collective with a strong focus on the Architectural Object and the role of emerging technologies within architecture. Their work is meant to both enchant and reflect on the crisis of thought which runs through architecture today by investigating new and established ideas as though they were materials, engaging seriously with hard-hitting agendas, whilst remaining at a distance from full immersion.
At 8’x8’x8’, iheartblob’s custom ‘Blob House’ was the largest and most complex installation for VMF Winter Arts.
Located at the Vancouver Art Gallery Plaza near the corner of W. Georgia & Hornby Street, the physical “Blob House” was a house-shaped installation featuring four interactive walls. Each of the walls served to activate unique Augmented Reality experiences from each side. In their artist statement, iheartblob explained that “‘Blob House’ investigated the role of AR within the architectural discipline, and provokes users to consider the future of space as a hybrid of both digital and physical forms. If we extend our reality by articulating physical objects with digital overlays, we can create a new visual language for architecture that integrates the dynamics of movement, interaction and perception into the static of the status quo.”
Currently based in Vienna, iheartblob is comprised of 3 incredible artists: Aleksandra Belitskaja, Ben James and Shaun McCallum. We were so blown away by their AR design that we had to reach out to learn more about this talented trio.
VMF: How did the iheartblob team come together?
IHB: We met during our Master’s at Die Angewandte while studying under Greg Lynn. During these studies we sought an outlet to explore experimental design ideas (formal and theoretical) that wouldn’t be tied to our studio design projects. This manifested itself in playful engagement with new concepts and adoption of social media. These themes began to grow, and define us as a practice: we were investigating new and established ideas as though they were materials, engaging seriously with hard-hitting agendas, whilst remaining at a distance from full immersion, and this created meaningful, and sometimes controversial, architectural discourse with other architects on social media. We came to call our studio ‘iheartblob’ as a reference to both the ‘blobitecture’ of Greg Lynn and the new technological / social media environment in which we practise.
VMF: This AR piece is incredibly intricate, what inspires the team when creating an experience like this?
IHB: We were excited to be the only contributors who were architects, allowing us a unique position to specifically engage with the spatial as well as formal potentials of AR. We desired to work with something constructed in order to explore ways in which AR can bridge the gap between physical and digital space, and VMF were incredibly supportive of this concept. As a studio, we’re inspired by mixed reality architecture as a way to evoke a new set of architectural experiences that are tied to built form yet also embracing of the intricacy, interactivity, and personal experience enabled by the digital.
The piece itself was inspired and conceived as a reconfiguration of a baroque architecture, which reconstitutes the symbolic nature of historic ornamentation with digital defaults. Unwrapped, the facade becomes the net of the platonic house which it engulfs. From an architectural perspective, this allows us to play with and question notions of scale on this platonic form. We use AR to embellish the digital defaults and allow them to transition from flattened surfaces to revealing their 3-dimensionality all the while stretching our perception of architecture today and more importantly provoking ideas for a mixed reality architecture of tomorrow.
VMF: As a team that creates digital experiences, what future advancements are you anticipating or looking forward to?
IHB: We’ve worked on a number of mixed reality experiences, combining physical and digital architecture to generate novel results and explore new aesthetics and spatial ideas. From this basis, we’re excited to see future advancements in gamification and AI as these are technologies that we believe can then be integrated into mixed reality architecture. The combination of AR, AI and gaming platforms has the potential to alter our workflows; disrupting how we design, construct and experience architectural environments in immersive new ways. They can lead to exciting opportunities within architecture such as decentralizing design and creating hybrid spaces that are uniquely finite. These are challenges for the status quo of the architecture discipline, but they are also fundamentally spatial and aesthetic, giving architects exciting new platforms in which to work if we embrace them.
VMF: What do you want people to take away with this piece?
IHB: A new perspective on architecture. There is often a misconception, espoused by a traditional and older generation of architects, which regard the discipline as hand sketching, static and concrete. We are hopeful this piece provokes an excitement for an architecture that could be if we disrupt architectural traditions and challenge new aesthetics. The world is propelling forward at an incomprehensible rate; new technology is changing everything around us, and it’s time architecture started catching up.
VMF: Do you have any other projects coming up that you're looking forward to?
IHB: Definitely! We’re actually really happy to also share with you another piece of work currently under-construction with social media AR in Toronto for Winter Stations. Our piece Arc De Blob is a reflection and repositioning of the Arch as an almost folly like architectural element. Feel free to check that out AR experience here - https://zinc-mirage-yuzu.glitch.me , and learn more about the project here - https://winterstations.com/pastwinners/arc-de-blob.
