KPF's industry-leading team is setting a new standard for visualization and collaboration in the construction industry with Varjo Virtual Reality, Twinmotion, and Varjo Reality Cloud.
Benefits of Varjo VR/XR technology for architectural visualization:
Provide a realistic full-scale design experience for clients and design teams.
Accelerate the design decision-making process, save costs, and effectively save 5-50% of the design conception time.
l It can reduce the need for physical prototypes, save resources and reduce waste.
Early decision-making helps avoid unnecessary repetitive rework during the construction phase, saving time, manpower and materials.
From dominating the skyline to being a tech pioneer
Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) is one of the most prestigious architectural firms in the world, famous for designing 6 of the 12 tallest skyscrapers in the world. With offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Seoul and Singapore, KPF's dedicated team of more than 700 professionals has experience working on large, complex projects leading global design innovation.
To drive more large-scale, industry-leading projects, KPF is constantly pursuing innovation and adopting new advanced technologies to drive the company's growth. Since the early days of technology, KPF's teams in New York and London have been at the forefront of exploring various virtual reality solutions to optimize building workflows. They initially thought of VR primarily as a spatial analysis tool, but as technical capabilities and visual accuracy matured, this view evolved into more use cases.
Designers and architects always strive to have higher resolution in VR, aiming to replicate the real world as accurately as possible to show the final result of a project. As the KPF team moved deeper into immersive technology, the limitations of early VR head-mounted displays became more apparent.
In particular, older devices struggled to provide the high-resolution output required for KPF's complex projects and often went awry in compatibility with KPF's preferred software tools. So they needed a standards-compliant, next-generation solution that bridged the gap between ideation and visualization with uncompromising fidelity.
A new dimension of design and perception
The KPF team found the Varjo AERO, a market-leading VR headset that met its high-end requirements, and stood out for its high-resolution capabilities and outperform competitors. With Varjo Aero's high-precision visual fidelity, KPF can now enable spatial analysis in virtual reality: they can scrutinize the finest details in a design and be able to see the same 1:1 scale model as in the real world. This high level of realism and immersion makes it possible for KPF to transform project workflows and customer interactions.
"Varjo AERO has dramatically changed the way our designers think about the experiences virtual reality can provide," said Andy Christoforou, innovation manager for applied research projects at KPF. "When we first started trying it, we immediately fell in love with it because it allowed us to check everything we needed in the headphones."
While 3D architectural rendering techniques have been used in the construction industry for many years, they have traditionally been limited to the two-dimensional limitations of displays or projection screens. Virtual reality-based visualization transcends this limitation, placing the user directly in the architectural scene, providing a realistic sense of size and reducing the need for complex measurement techniques. "The ability of architects to travel and immerse themselves in virtual architectural models provides a unique perspective and better sensory feedback than viewing them on a screen or physical model," says Jonathan Dreyfus, an expert in computational practice at KPF University in London.
"As VR/XR technology becomes more surreal, I believe the industry will increasingly use it in conjunction with traditional media. After all, why limit yourself to a single image when you can experience a fully immersive interactive environment? ”
Better feedback and decision-making
KPF's London team built a dedicated virtual reality space for immersive virtual reality presentations to clients. Equipped with base stations and equipment, the studio is ready to show clients a highly immersive virtual reality experience and help them experience the project directly before construction begins. This setup provides users with better spatial understanding, enabling faster decision-making and feedback.
"Customers who tried it are generally satisfied with the experience." Jonathan Dreyfus said, "They were able to capture design details in the experience, such as floor-to-ceiling height and the view through windows, that they might not have noticed in the floor plan or other visual materials before."
With immersive visualization, customers can test design iterations, choose the best options, and save design teams 5 to 50 percent of their ideation time. If customers are still a little uncertain after looking at regular visuals, taking them into a virtual reality experience can be an effective way to clear up their doubts and speed up the decision-making process. "In some cases, a 30-minute virtual reality session can save weeks of modeling, drafting and presentation, as well as significant cost savings for the project," explains Jonathan Dreyfus.
Seamless transition to advanced visualization
For KPF, one of the main benefits of adopting the Varjo virtual reality headset is its compatibility with software tools such as Twin motion, Enscape, Unreal Engine, NVIDIA Omniverse, and VR plugins such as Arkio and Prospect. What stood out for the team was Varjo's proactive approach to updating and supporting these critical applications. "The Varjo team was able to provide immediate assistance with our updates or any issues we had. Usually, we get a response within a few minutes, either with a solution or with some workaround," says Andy Christoforou. "This level of support is one of the reasons we stick with Varjo. We don't want to switch to another headset that doesn't support all the tools we use. ”
Twinmotion's new support for Varjo's VR and XR devices provides a valuable bridge between VR and industry-leading real-time visualization tools. Twinmotion brings a number of powerful features that help KPF characterize its projects, many of which are unique to the platform. The software also provides an effective entry point for projects built with Unreal Engine, enabling teams to create more advanced interactive experiences.
This integration has been helpful for KPF and streamlined existing workflows: designers can now breathe life into their architectural designs by activating Twinmotion, selecting VR mode, and immersing themselves directly in their 3D models via Varjo headsets with just a few keystrokes.
"It was important for us to be able to easily connect Varjo directly to Twinmotion." Jonathan Dreyfus said: "We just hit play and the software connects directly to the Varjo AERO, which is a huge time saver.
Redefine VR for professional use with Varjo Reality Cloud
KPF is the first architecture firm to put Varjo Reality Cloud, a cloud-based streaming service from Varjo capable of delivering remote immersive content to multiple devices. Through Varjo Reality Cloud, KPF's team can upload visualizations of VR/XR content to the cloud, allowing colleagues and clients to browse and stream design iterations to VR headsets or other devices anytime, anywhere.
The KPF team was impressed with Varjo Reality Cloud and believes that its streaming quality and low latency are expected to rival local computing. "Varjo Reality Cloud is one of my favorite aspects of Varjo products. I found this to be an impressive solution, almost akin to the "holy grail" of virtual reality, which can meet everything you ask for. Andy Christoforou praised.
Given the shift to hybrid work, many of KPF's designers often rely on laptops and struggle to reach high-performance computers. Varjo Reality Cloud bridges this gap, eliminating the need for advanced hardware setups and giving teams greater version control to manage shared capabilities for their latest design iterations. "Being able to easily upload large scenes to the Varjo Reality Cloud and join anytime, anywhere without worrying about hardware management solved a significant challenge for the team." Andy Christoforou said.
Using Varjo Reality Cloud for VR cloud collaboration has the following benefits:
Additional control over centralized management of design iterations.
Share designs more easily between teams, colleagues, and clients.
Reduce local hardware requirements for complex 3D model visualization.