During the common academic life, memorable events happen all in one place. As a result, students, professors, staff, among many others, often learn to cherish its physical location. A building or a campus becomes one's home, part of one's day-to-day and coming-of-age. Yet, due to unfortunate events in the past year, these convivial places were made physically inaccessible.

​

Gund.Io was selected for the Harvard Kirkland Gallery Spring Exhibition. This project utilizes the digital form to interpret iconic facilities, spaces, and events from Harvard University and the Graduate School of Design. The collective exhibit underscores the role of placemaking in academia. It highlights that even in challenging scenarios, there is a concern in reenvisioning common spaces and communities of the university. Although the physical site remains inaccessible, its ethos has not left our imagination. The works in this exhibition render visual and sensorial experiences that were not possible in the physical setting. They offer a participatory way to look back at familiar places while at the same time creatively speculating how they could be. By doing so, the participating artists and designers incorporated personal thoughts and artistic manifestations in its content and form. With these immersive works, iconic spaces of Harvard can be traversed again, but now they can also be clicked, viewed, liked, and shared.

​

Gund.io is an ongoing prototype of an immersive 3D environment for students and professors to virtually learn, collaborate, and socialize under one centralized platform. Through the digitization of our familiar, yet for many unfamiliar Gund Hall, we augmented this space through a gamification strategy and WebXR technologies. Users can navigate within this dynamic and multi-sensorial space with avatars and view the other exhibitions.

 

Producers: George Guida (MArch II 2022), Runjia Tian (MDes Tech 2021), Yuebin Dong (MAUD, MDes 2021), Gabriella Perry (MDes Tech 2022)

 

Exhibition Curators: Hermano Luz Rodrigues (MDes ADPD 2021), Birdia Zuo (MDes ADPD 2021), Stephanie Lee Yeung (MDes ADPD 2021), Shiyu Liu (MDes ADPD 2022), Shane Ah-Siong (MDes ADPD 2022)

 

​

eCAADe 2021 Conference Paper: Cumincad Link

​

eCAADe 2021 Conference Presentation: Youtube Link

​

Harvard GSD Kirkland Gallery Exhibition: 2021.4 A Search for a Virtual Harvard            

​

Harvard GSD Exhibition: Gallery 40k : That is a Wrap Exhibition

​

Video Duration: 2 min, 29 sec