A virtual journey to discover how the city of Bologna has thought and is thinking about its future. The city’s most important and innovative development projects are illustrated in an artistic and aesthetic virtual reality journey, which offers an original look at the future. Not a science-fiction reconstruction or a technical illustration of architectural or urban projects, but a solicitation to “discover”, to look into the possible future, in its relationship with the present and with the past.
The project
The future of a city is something that is built, that originates from the past and is thought of in the present.
The presentation of the projects that have changed and/or will change the city of Bologna highlights these elements: continuity with the past, the design thinking of the present, the vision of the future.
Therefore, it is not so much a matter of visualizing in a more or less realistic way what the city will be like, but of understanding how it is conceived, what references and what objectives the projects propose.
Wearing the virtual reality helmet (HMD), the visitor finds himself in an environment that reproduces (in a stylized and simplified way) the physical room of the Museum in which he is located. The journey immediately opens towards the city, the room is transformed, the visitor finds himself above a stylized but easily recognizable city of Bologna.
A narrative voice guides him as he moves over a Bologna recognizable by some symbolic elements, where he sees some covered and hidden elements.
The 3D video scrolls and takes the visitor near the first of these covered elements, and it will be the visitor himself who discovers it, lifting the veil that covers it (through a gesture of the hands with tracking devices).
When the element is discovered, the content about that project explodes. Historical images are displayed (the place as it was before), project sketches and drawings (the way it was conceived), significant references (the reasons why it has been conceived in this way), up to the final images (real images if already created, project renderings if still to be created).
An absolutely original virtual reality installation, which offers a reflection on the city, on its way of thinking about its future, because sometimes, crushed by the past and harassed by the present, one risks… to forget the future.
When: since 2019 – permanent
Where: Genus Bononiae – Bologna City Museum, Palazzo Pepoli
What: Virtual Reality Application
What we made
Concept, project design, content, graphics, 3d modeling and animation. In collaboration with What We Are and Professor Marco Roccetti