VISION
VISION
VISION
In 1960, Doug Engelbart pioneered human-computer interaction with groundbreaking tools like the computer mouse, videoconferencing, and interactive visualizations. This work culminated in "The Mother of All Demos" in 1968, where Engelbart demonstrated these innovations live, transforming the conference space into an interactive interface where humans and machines communicated in real time through layered projections, sound, and remote participation. Since then, technology has advanced dramatically, and many interaction techniques once considered experimental are now routine. Yet the broader space Engelbart helped point to-how we should structure human–machine collaboration, distribute agency, and design interaction as a shared, evolving system-remains far from fully explored. Despite today’s powerful hardware and software, many foundational questions about collaborative reasoning, attention, and embodied participation in mixed human–machine environments are still open, and the field’s most ambitious interaction paradigms are only beginning to take shape.
These questions are also inherently spatial and material, making them central to architecture, engineering, and construction. Here, interaction is not only confined to interfaces on a screen. It is enacted through bodies moving in space, tools engaging with materials, and machines operating within dynamic environments. Designing in this context means translating intent into geometry, geometry into fabrication action, and physical feedback back into digital models—often in real time and in real construction environments. As a result, themes such as digital craft, human–machine interaction, and the translation between physical and digital systems demand new design processes and new forms of spatial interaction, where extended reality environments intersect with augmented humans, robotic and automated systems.
For this reason, the Architecture and Human Augmentation research group investigates these challenges through a spatial lense, with a focus on how humans and machines can mutually augment one another -technically, perceptually, and operationally - across design, fabrication, and the experience of spaces.