The paper describes a systematic approach that follows the tradition of the Bauhaus principles of craftsmanship and visual perception. Precedents are drawn from the use of light, color and texture in the visual arts such as the glass collage assemblages of Albers and Moholy-Nagy’s camera-less photogram. References are also drawn from Kandinsky’s diagrammatic analysis of still life drawings and Kepes’s idea of the language of vision.

The focus of the paper is how digital media and physical material can be used interchangeably as instruments in a design environment. The investigation centers on developing teaching methods for seeing, thinking and making of spatial design. A sequence of experimental exercises stimulates students’ intuition and powers of analytical observation. This systematic approach helps students explore how space can be perceived and informed by using types of media that are significantly different in their nature. The methodology explores the concerns and techniques of making and exploring space through the use of light, shadow, motion, color and transparency.

This work questions the role of precision and fidelity in our experience and representation of a “real” physical environment. On the one hand, the resulting VR environment is less complete and has lower fidelity than digital environments created through traditional modeling and rendering workflows. On the other hand, because each point in the point cloud is literally sampled from the actual environment, the resulting model also captures more of the noise and imprecision that characterizes our world. The result is an uncanny immersive experience that is less precise than traditional digital environments, yet represents many more of the unique physical characteristics that define our urban experiences.