Abstract

Augmented Space refers to group of emerging technologies that are unified by their ability to overlay physical space with information. It is a paradigm that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic reality. Augmented space disrupts the long established dichotomies of public/private and home/work embedded in the city, and calls for new terms to describe our inhabitation of it. As mobile technology and wireless fields of presence envelop the built environment, the electronomad is empowered to define her own use of space and subjective reading of the augmented city.
The thesis introduces Augmented Reality (AR) as a framework through which to understand the city, and discusses its far-reaching consequences for the built environment and the architectural profession. It reviews our changing inhabitation of the city, focusing on the changing relevance of the domestic programme to demonstrate the dislocation of boundaries.
The invasion of the home by media and technology can be contrasted to a parallel emergence of domestic values in the network. As technology-mediated interactions form an increasingly important part of everyday life, the thesis argues that the dislocation of domesticity will define the character of the augmented city as a domestic space. To demonstrate this migration, the domestic programme is broken down into its constituent elements and defined as a series of connections and emotions, a process of constructing subjectivities. With Augmented Reality (AR) as a site of investigation, this definition is compared to and integrated with the human-computer interface to propose a new model of augmented domesticity.