My Space: Uwe Rieger

Buried in the basement of the School of Architecture and Planning is a room lined with interactive screens, motion-capture cameras and an array of headsets resembling futuristic visors.

This is the arc/sec Lab, short for ‘architecture per second’, where the physical and digital worlds collide.

Run by Associate Professor Uwe Rieger – along with chief technologist Yinan Liu and Dr Charlotta Windahl, a senior lecturer in Management and International Business – the lab lets people step into architectural spaces that might not yet exist.

Put on a HoloLens – a lightweight, mixed-reality headset – and virtual walls and furniture appear around you. Once inside this ‘reality’, you can walk through a room and sense its scale and light, pick up objects and pull up files with a pinch of your fingers.

“We’re trying to create architectural environments that aren’t static anymore, but can behave like a computer,” says Uwe. His definition of architecture is broader than buildings and construction sites: “Architecture is the relationship between a person and the space around them.”
 

That philosophy is already evident in the lab’s applications of the technology, including the XR Tumour Evolution Model, developed alongside the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences in 2022. The project drew on nearly a decade of data that tracked the treatment of a patient who had developed 90 tumours.

Initially the FMHS researchers asked for a virtual reality fly-through of the patient’s body, he explains, but when questioned further it turned out they really wanted a way to communicate between specialists.

The arc/sec Lab responded by creating a 3D interactive workspace, which synchronised ten HoloLenses to create a hybrid environment. Medical specialists could explore how different cancers spread through the body, handling holographic information directly in space and time.

“We created a prototypical laboratory to bring all this information into a spatial context,” says Uwe.

“Not only were they able to access the data as holograms, but they could also grab digital information, pull it up, see it on the walls, and move through timelines to follow how the cancer and treatment evolved. It also took into consideration how these people work and how much space they need – and that makes it architecture.”

The model brought two-dimensional information from a computer into a three-dimensional space that could be experienced and touched. For Uwe, this is the ethos of the arc/sec Lab: cyber elements that enhance physical architecture, rather than replace it.

More recently, he’s been exploring installations that blend motion-capture technology with a relic from the past: disposable red-and-cyan 3D glasses (like you’d use to watch a 3D movie). Just put on a pair and step in front of the lab’s large screens, and the holographic structures created in the lab become crystal clear.

It’s a small-scale version of the installations and prototypes Uwe and the lab have exhibited, including ‘LightSense’ – an installation shown in Lausanne during 2023 and 2024. Spanning 12 metres, the structure depicts a pair of translucent wings that move like a bird in flight. Digital 3D projections extend the wings’ reach, while a microphone beneath the structure picks up visitors’ voices.

The AI system (developed at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute) that controlled the installation's structural movement, verbal responses and holographic images was trained on 60,000 poems. Visitors wearing 3D glasses could engage with the work.

“These projects don’t just push functionality, accuracy or efficiency,” he adds. “They introduce a new technological idea for cyber-physical architecture – one that only became possible in the last two decades with fast computing.

“We don’t yet fully understand how it will operate, or how we will relate to it. That is why we build these objects: to explore new hybrid possibilities.”

- Jogai Bhatt