Robinson Hall Atlas
2018 - 19
Target Platform | Mobile (unpublished)
Project | Robinson Hall Atlas is a companion mobile AR application for guests and students visiting Robinson Hall in Harvard Yard. It helps visitors access the histories intertwined with Robinson Hall and the historical artifacts that are housed there.
Role | Designer, 3D Artist, Developer (Solo Project)
UI/UX Design
Using Vuforia’s image & object recognition features
Implementation in Unity
Advisors | Prof. Joseph Connors at Harvard University, Prof. Takehiko Nagakura at MIT
demo video (2019)
on-site ar test demos (2018)
There are two main augmented reality experiences within the application, initially developed during my study with Professor Nagakura at the MIT Architecture department. The AR experiences engage with the Sarcophagus of Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, located on the right of the main entrance, and with the balcony at the upper left wall of the main lobby.
Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus
By overlaying inscriptions from a Piranesi print of the original sarcophagus, I tried to bring back the historic context of the artifact so that it can be more than a formal copy and tell the history of the original artifact. The translate function for the inscription adds a simple yet powerful educational aspect. There is a map function to show where the original sarcophagus is now so that the users can make a clear connection between the cast and the original.
Balcony at Cancelleria Palace
On the left is the second intervention of the project on the cast of the balcony at the Cancelleria Palace. The cast is currently placed on the wall in the lobby of Robinson Hall, surrounded by bare buildings. I tried to add the ambience of the original location and context of the building by augmenting the cast with the original walls on the Cancelleria Palace. Clicking on left blue sphere reveals interactive areas highlighted in blue. The user can learn more about the respective parts of the balcony and connected histories by clicking on these areas.
*Description texts are provided by Yael Saiger and Professor Connors.
hi-fi mockups
historical background
Facade of Robinson Hall in 2018. PC: J. Connors
Robinson Hall is a building in Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA. It currently houses Harvard's History Department, but was originally built to house the Architecture school. For that purpose, the architects designed the building as a celebration for classical architecture which was popular in the early 1900's when it was being built.
Views of the Robinson Hall.
The main lobby, which used to be called the "Hall of Casts," contained sixteen casts of artifacts from renown classical architecture and sculptures. While most of the casts have been disposed through time, several prominent casts such as the sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus, the balcony from Cancelleria palace and the door from the Temple of Hercules in Cori still remain in place. The main facade still retains casts of artifacts that it was designed with.
Professor Connors, a historian in Renaissance and Baroque Architecture at Harvard, has conducted extensive research about the histories intertwined with the building and its artifacts. With the support of Yael Saiger, together we developed the Robinson Hall Atlas.
RH Atlas extended Demo (protopie)
The Extended Version of Robinson Hall Atlas was intended to showcase all aspects of the history of Robinson Hall. Because of the large amount of content based on Robinson Hall, it would take too long to put together the whole app in a one person des/dev team. However here is the organizing structure and spine of what the Extended Version could look like.