Fantasy of Model making in urban planning

As a urban planner, we are designing the physical environment to fit people's life. In this working process model making is very important for designer to test and demonstrate their idea.

Today we work on these 2 kinds of models:

Handmade physical model

Virtual model on 2D screen


How about future?

In the film X-men, I discovered a scene, people gathered around a round table, and a digital dynamic model apears on the table and chang its content,orientation, and scale as people want.

It's awesome!

I believe it could be realised in near future, today we already have some 3D projection technology like this:




As inspired by the user friendly interface of Microsoft surface and the powerful fuction of model making software Skechup, let’s imagine in the future, we can edit directly on the virtual model showing in front of us with our hand, like we do today on the screen of computer. We can make a shape, add floor and windows on it, edit its details, paint the wall with different pattern, choose various premade street furniture and place them on street, turn on the sunlight to see if the inner garden is totally under shadow of building, attach information of construction, energy consumption, water circuit in each building model, even simulate different weather and season change of greenery, and so on.
All in this Virtual Model!

It will be a mirror of reality!