Posted on 01.08.10

Architecture Meets Augmented Reality

by Tim Frick

Imagine if you could hold your iPhone up to a building and it would tell you not only what is inside the building such as stores, restaurants, and so on, but also who is in the building and what they are saying. What if it also gave you information on items inside the building that were on sale or what reservation times were free at your favorite restaurant? Well, an architecture firm in Tokyo has created a building in Tokyo that comes with its own iPhone app that puts all this information and more at your fingertips.

Imagine if you could hold your iPhone up to a building and it would tell you not only what is inside the building such as stores, restaurants, and so on, but also who is in the building and what they are saying. What if it also gave you information on items inside the building that were on sale or what reservation times were free at your favorite restaurant? An architecture firm in Tokyo has created a building in Tokyo that comes with its own iPhone app that puts all this information and more at your fingertips.

Instead of scanning your retina a la Minority Report N Building puts control of the retail experience in the hands of the user. The building’s facade is covered in Quick Response (QR) codes, each of which is associated with a specific section of the building. Use your mobile device to read the QR codes and you can get up-to-date information on the shops inside. The iPhone app takes the concept even further. Not only can you find out all sorts of information on the shops inside as well as tweets and comments from people inside the building (a function that incorporates Twitter geotagging), but you can also download coupons, make dinner reservations, find out what’s on sale and more.

Qosmo worked with Tokyo-based architectural firm Terada Design to create N Building, a retail low-rise near Tachikawa station in Tokyo that sits amidst a shopping district. The building is detected in real-time by its shape and location of your iPhone with information superimposed over the live image (hence the augmented reality angle).

Here’s a video of N Building in action:

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

Cliff Kuang noted in his article on the Fast Company site, “Can you imagine if you could look out over a cityscape, scan the skyline for QR codes, and find out information about where you want to go, what you should be doing, and who’s doing it? The mind boggles when you consider where this could go, once the capabilities of social networks is looped into the mix—Loopt is just the tip of the iceberg.”

This does indeed have huge implications not only for marketing but also for education, cultural institutions, transportation, entertainment, healthcare and a slew of other industries. On the Vimeo page for N Building Alexander Reeder said “we envision a cityscape unhindered by ubiquitous signage and also and improvement to the quality and accuracy of the information itself.” But does that mean that all the buildings of the future will be covered with QR and bar codes rather than billboards and LCD displays?