Animate this!

Written by Tia Kansara, PhD student at the UCL Energy Institute

The projections were awe-inspiring: an unrivalled London event. Whoever would have thought ten years ago that education could be delivered in such an interactive, fun and intelligent manner?

The above image is of the UCL main building in all its architectural glory, below how it was transformed at night

The UCL quad was filled with people excited to see how the iconic Wilkins building was transformed, as EPSRC-funded research was projected on the building as if it were a screen.

Projections portraying a variety of visuals, from energy consumption to wind mapping, were shown on the Wilkins building.

I remember when Sir Ken Robinson mentioned schools killing creativity, and yet UCL’s embrace of creativity was exemplified by the evening, curated to celebrate the achievements of the Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation centre (VEIV).

The VEIV is the result of a collaboration between the UCL Bartlett and department of Computer Science, and offers postdoctoral students the opportunity to actualize their research using computer science – one of the reasons industry is so supportive of such collaborations.

More than 50 industry partners support the programme, including Microsoft, BBC, Disney, ARUP, Foster+Partners, CIBSE, to name but a few.

Gian Franco, a student of VEIV mentioned how the “course is rich in interdisciplinary learning – we make use of combining two specialisms and are left with a joint-specialisation.”

The co-director of the course, Dr Dejan Mumovic explained: “This approach [to research] enables us to address some of the key challenges facing humanity, such as carbon reduction of the aging UK building stock.”

An industrial sponsor, Mr Alvise Simondetti of ARUP said “working with UCL complements the firm in the skills we do not have.”

Could this mean the end of the standard textbook model of education? I believe so – the evening was proof that actualising research in a way that enables innovative, intelligent communications in order to generate an experience clearly enhances traditional education.

For more information about the event and VEIV centre, click here.

For more images of the VEIV projections, see our set on UCL’s Flickr

See a video of the projections below: