Overview
With an interdisciplinary HSLU team we supported the planning development process of the Kartoni-Quartier in Glarus. A former industrial zone will become a new residential and cultural quarter, where social meeting places are an important topic. A community park is planned to the south of the new area. For its design, the citizens were invited to actively participate - we were involved in this process from a research perspective.
The central research question was how this participatory process can be meaningfully supported with the method extension of augmented reality.
The municipality of Glarus and the Kartoni Quartier AG had invited the public to the "Kartoni-Zmittag" on May 21 2022. About 50 interested people accepted this invitation and put their needs and ideas on paper. In smaller and rotating workshop groups, suggestions on various topics (such as culture, usage, leisure, etc.) were developed.
In cooperation with the project managers, we clustered all the input from the public into four different park ideas and designed them both visually and spatially. These four different project sketches served as a basis for discussion with the population in a subsequent AR workshop.
For the visualizations of the visions, we developed a visual language that comes along sketchy and at the same time should allow an immersive immersion. The focus should not be on the design details, but rather steer the dialogue towards the fundamental question of which park form and type of use is preferred.
More than 30 interested people took part in the follow-up workshop on Kartoni Park using AR. Where there is currently an empty field, groups were able to experience the four project visions on site on tablets: Herb Garden, Multigenerational Playground, Adventure Park incl. Petting Zoo and the Nature Oasis could be discovered from different spatial perspectives, compared and discussed in the group.
Following the AR tours, further feedback and evaluation was obtained in plenary sessions using posters. The results will now be the basis for further planning for the community and for Kartoni-Quartier AG.
Conclusion:
This two-stage workshop process confirmed the high potential in combining analog with digital participation methods. The visualization and interaction possibilities of AR enable a stimulated and information-based dialog situationally & spatially directly on site between all stakeholder groups.
We will continue to research and develop the participatory possibilities of AR with our practice partners based on our findings - in particular, how the feedback and co-design process can be further promoted using AR. Translated with
