John Messner teaching in IEL, October 2003

In August 2003, Dr. John Messner, Chris Bo Tan (graduate student) and Robert Leicht (4th year AE) started an multidisciplinary project with faculty and students from the architecture and landscape architecture departments. The project, funded by the Raymond A. Bowers Program for Excellence in Design and Construction of the Building Environment, has a goal to illustrate the importance of collaboration between all participants in the design and construction process through the development of a comprehensive immersive virtual building prototype of the new School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) Building under construction at Penn State. The virtual building prototype will include information on the building product, the construction process, and the surrounding project environment. The prototype will be available to faculty and students for display in the ITS/SALA Immersive Environments Lab (IEL) which is a large three-screen, 3D visual display system that allows for viewing the model on a full, 1-to-1 scale. The development of the virtual prototype is being performed by a collaborative team of students and faculty in the departments.

After developing the virtual building prototype, the project will focus on the creation of educational modules that can be used by the faculty and students in the involved departments. These education modules will be developed to graphically illustrate the roles of the various professionals in the design and construction of the built environment and to teach AE students about topics such as systems coordination, space planning, and construction sequencing. A course on advanced visualization technology in the design and construction industry will also be offered.