Studying Architectural Massing Strategies in Co-design Mobile Augmented Reality Tool versus 3D Virtual World

Researchers attempt to offer new design tools and technologies to support design process facilitating alternative visualization and representation techniques. This paper describes a comparison study that took place in the Department of Architecture, at the Istanbul Technical University between 2016-2017. We compare when architects designed mass volumes of buildings in an marker-based mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application with that of when they used a collaborative 3D Virtual World. The massing strategy in the AR environment was an additive approach that is to collaboratively design the small parts to make the whole. Alignment and arrangement of the parts were not the main concerns of the designers in AR, instead the functional development of the design proposal, bodily engagements with the design representation, framing and re-framing of the given context and parameters become the discussion topics.