Zaha Hadid’s “Project Correl” Exhibition Allows Visitors to Build a Virtual Structure Over Time

The Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group has published details of Project Correl, a collaborative experiment to test the potential of virtual reality as a tool for design. The experiment is currently on display in the University Contemporary Art Museum (MUAC) in Mexico City, where it forms part of Zaha Hadid Architects’ “Design As Second Nature” exhibition.

In the exhibition, visitors have the chance to engage with Project Correl in real time, transported to a virtual environment to collaborate with each other on an ever-evolving structure. The design will be periodically captured and exhibited in the gallery as scaled 3D printed models to further demonstrate the design process encouraged by Correl.

Presented as a “real-time VR experience demonstrating the remarkable possibilities immersive technologies will offer architects to collaborate and design in augmented reality,” visitors to the exhibition will build a virtual structure over a number of months. Up to three participants at a time will move freely in digital space to select, scale, and place components from a dynamic set of tools. Although the principles guiding the placement of the components is guided by ZHA, visitors have completed freedom of scale and position of placement.

To maintain a degree of order, individual components not connected with others will soon disappear from the VR space, with the number of connected components dictating how long they survive in the evolving structure. Any component, or cluster of components, connected directly to the primary structure will remain as permanent elements. As the project grows, 3D-printed models will be exhibited alongside the project, demonstrating the evolution of the structure from continued public input.

The “Design As Second Nature” exhibition is open at MUAC Mexico until 3rd March 2019, where it showcases the studio’s 40 years of experimentation in design, construction, material innovations. The exhibition also contains a knitted-concrete pavilion designed by ZHA in collaboration with ETH Zurich.