Between September 9th and 12th, a fun urban renewal project was held at the Kitsuki City, in Oita Prefecture, Japan. Kitsuki is home to the Kitsuki Castle with a jokamachi in its neighbourhood. Demands to redevelop and rennovate the region without damaging the historical landscape gave birth to the "Build Live Japan 2015" design competition (Sponsored by IAI Japan), through advanced architectural IT technologies.

The jokamachi currently has 12 empty lots available, and theme of the competition was to leverage on these empty lots to design buildings or facilities that properly blend into the surrounding landscape though BIM technologies. A total of 12 teams that consisted of more than 170 technicians and student designers all over Japan entered the competition and submitted their designs to compete

September 19th, and 20th was the public viewing days for the projects. Each team would put up panels or posters to explain the concepts and logics behind their submissions, while being individually interviewed for the difficulties they have encountered. Furthermore, all local residents of the jokamachi were welcomed into the venue and public voting was held to determine the ultimate winner of "Kitsuki Award". The results of which were announced on October 23, during the "ArchiFuture 2015".

FORUM8 assumed the role of technological support for the competition. Precisely, FORUM8 provided the information on using the VR-Cloud to view 3D data via the internet, and the freedom to navigate through the virtual space created, via the Oculus Rift VR head mounted display, as well as many solutions. During the 2 days of the public viewing, a Skype meeting was set up by FORUM8 to allow each team to use the UC-win/Road software to describe and explain their projects.

Each team also uploaded and played their own concept videos produced by Lumion, to condense the most important points in their designs. Each team must organize a list of 5-12 main important features of their design and demonstrate the rationales behind them through UC-win/Road and prepare for an interview of no less than 30 minutes. 

Maeda Corporation's team "Skunkworks" was highly praised for its beautiful videos and high precision data production, indeed the work of professionals. The student teams on the other hand are also not to be taken lightly - for example, the Tokyo City Universtiy who has been attending every single one of such design competitions in Japan, sent out the "Farmer's Stay" team who promotoed numerous cozy ideas that truly inspire people to inhabitat the city and call it home forever. The flurry of innovative ideas astounded the Kituki City Hall staffs, who has been observing the whole process. Also, the youngest team from Miyakojima Technical Senior High School of Osaka Prefecture's presentation deeply excited the audiences as well.

During the afternoon of the second day of the public viewing, the mayor of Kitsuki, Mr. Nagamatsu, attended the student interveiw sessions. He also showed interest in each team's demonstration panels and tried out the Oculus Rift himself, and has expressed deep satisfaction over the importance of involving local residents in designing a better habitat. He also claimed he will take away all of the data created and seriously evaluate each one of them with eveyone in the City Hall, and would host more of such competitions to involve more citizens in the future. The entire public viewing was broadcasted over Ustream by enthusiastic locals, indicating how the event was well-received. 

   

VDWC/CPWC Preliminary Round Results Announced!
Judging Conducted During The 6th Summer Workshop

 

In June 30, 2015, the 6th International VR Symposium Summer Workshop was held. At the same time, the VDWC and CPWC preliminary round judgment was also held at the same day, with a handful of teams nominated for the next round of the competition. 

48 teams (11 Japan, 37 overseas) have been nominated for the 5th Virtual Design World Cup on Cloud (sponsored by VDWC Executive Committee) preliminary round, and 14 teams (3 Japan, 11 overseas) have been nominated for the 3rd Cloud Programming World Cup (sponsored by CPWC Executive Committee).