Visibility in Architecture Extended through Audiovisual Communication Technologies

Audiovisual communication media that are embedded in physical architecture can extend buildings by integrating spaces that are non-adjacent. A large variety of technologies has been developed and subsequently evaluated in this context, such as video conferencing, media spaces and audiovisual technologies embedded in collaborative virtual environments. The resulting extended spatial topologies are designed to increase organisational flexibility, improve team cohesion and to reduce the need for business travel, a concern particularly relevant today. Two effects of this are of interest in the context here. Firstly, when these technologies are always-on as well as widely accessible, and therefore permit spontaneous social interaction, studies have shown how the connected spaces can become an integral part of social life and the existing work processes of a given organisation. Secondly, movement in the connected virtual or remote physical environments can make our bodies appear to be extended through electronic sense organs. In other words, while not being able to physically enter these spaces, we can perceive them with a subset of our perception: in the cases discussed here vision and hearing. Related to both the above, there is good evidence that brain, body and environment cannot be considered separately in our understanding of how we perceive the world, an argument that has been picked up to explain some of the phenomena found in spatial analysis conducted through Space Syntax techniques. Given the background of technological extensions to our environments and to our bodies, it then becomes necessary to re-evaluate our understanding of movement through architectural environments. This paper begins this process by focussing on one particular issue: visibility in audiovisually extended architectural environments as it is affected by camera technologies. For this purpose, key camera properties are being considered before an overview of ‘spatial technological isovists’ is presented. This is used to discuss the effects on visibility, access to space and permeability as well as the apparent shape of audiovisually extended architectural configurations. 1. Technology extensions to environment and body A wide variety of audiovisual communication media have been developed and deployed to overcome the limitations of physical spatial layouts. With the aim to improve organisational flexibility and to allow geographically distributed workplaces, including outsourcing activities and tele-working, organisation are making use of these technologies in the boardroom, ordinary offices and on the desktop. This results in hybrid audiovisually extended spatial environments that consist of a mixture of physical and electronic places of different types and geometries, ‘held together’ by a variety of technologies. Some of the most interesting research in this are has emerged from the work in media spaces, placing always-on audiovisual connections within ordinary office environments (Mantei et al. 1991; Dourish and Bly 1992; Adler and Henderson 1994). These were frequently augmented with additional sources of information such as the status of people or resources within the wider office