Ronald Reagan once said, “Status quo, you know, that is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.’”
The status quo in the AEC industry is woefully inefficient communication. HKS recognized this and asked, “What if there was a room incorporating the latest audio/video and network technology where we could bring a team of architects, consultants, contractors, and sub-trades together to save the owner time, money, and frustration?”
HKS made this dream a reality, and it is called the Virtual Theater. The Virtual Theater offers a place where 3-D coordination, 4-D planning, photorealistic visualization, dynamic simulation, and accurate analysis of project design can happen in real time. Navisworks and Revit models can be viewed and edited in front of the entire project team. The Virtual Theater is breaking down the barriers of the status quo.
So what are the barriers of the status quo? There are many, but the big ones are disjointed and conflicting information, waiting days or even weeks for validation of a potential design solution, difficulty understanding complex technical drawings, cost and time overruns associated with unseen conflicts, and buildings that don’t perform as expected.
The only way these barriers are going to be redefined is through the cooperation, collaboration, and trust of building owners, architects, consultants, contractors, and sub-trades. And, how do you build that kind of trust and cooperation, especially in an industry riddled with the opposite? The best way is through open and transparent communication.
The Virtual Theater is all about communication. Among the technologies incorporated into this room is a digital interactive white board. Architects and other team members can walk up to the board, which shows a dynamic projected image of a building, and draw on top of it, while the rest of the team can see what they are doing on a duplicate projected image on an immense 10-foot-by-20-foot adjacent screen.
