IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

The digital twin – a virtual representation of a physical or speculative entity – is quickly becoming an indispensable tool for industry; however, applications of this emerging technology that expand its usage beyond predictive optimization are currently lacking. Using projects created by graduate landscape architecture students within the framework of a design studio as examples, this paper explores two potential applications of the digital twin, as (1) an interactive medium for counterfactual and speculative storytelling, and (2) a living archive for both observable and tacit information. The studio challenged students to construct a digital twin of a local site (one that features unprotected historic buildings anticipating imminent change due to development pressures), and to collectively construct a scaled diorama of the site as an analog twin. Using the analog twin as a stage for storytelling, students were tasked to craft and film speculative or counterfactual narratives that inspire reinterpretations of the site. These narratives were based on archival and ethnographic research, including interviews with people who frequent the site to collect their memories, impressions, and other implicit knowledge. Lastly, students imported their digital twin models into a gaming engine to create interactive simulations accessible through virtual reality headsets that reinterpreted the site through the lens of their narratives. The approach presented blends pragmatic analysis with imaginative ideation to anticipate novel possibilities for built and natural environments, demonstrating how digital twins can record and represent explicit (e.g. physical, spatial) and implicit (e.g. tacit, undocumented, phenomenological) information about our ever-changing environments.