Real-Time Archviz Enhances Kohn Pedersen Fox’s Design Processes

International architectural practice Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) is constantly striving to improve efficiencies and enable greater creative exploration through the application of the latest technologies. With nine offices worldwide and projects based anywhere from Europe to the US and China, the company takes a global approach to its design process by fostering collaboration; it’s not uncommon for a single project to involve team members based in London, New York, and Singapore, for example, who come together virtually in what Cobus Bothma, Director of Applied Research, calls their “tenth office”. To enable collaborative remote working, KPF has been exploring real-time collaboration technology for some years, including NVIDIA’s project Holodeck. More recently, the company’s VR specialist Michael Koutsoubis has led the accelerated adoption of Prospect by IrisVR by distributing Oculus Quest headsets to multiple teams in both the US and the UK. The team also bases some of its custom development on the collaborative VR templates inside Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. These efforts enable multiple users, who may be located across the world, to review and edit designs together. In today’s pandemic-imposed work-from-home environment, this becomes particularly relevant. It’s a hot topic at the moment. Bothma recently joined a panel of industry experts in Virtual Spaces and the Future of Collaboration, the debut episode of Epic Games’ new video series, The Pulse, which uncovers emerging trends in interactive technology.