Emmenpark" becomes a playground for digital tools

Emmenpark is to be redesigned in mid-2021. The few seating and sunbathing areas and scattered trees are to be redesigned together with the local population. This is now to be done with the help of augmented reality (AR). Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is supporting the project with research.

Emmenpark is to be revitalised and upgraded into a popular meeting place in the neighbourhood. The design and art students at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts are helping with this neighbourhood project. With the help of a planning tool with augmented reality (AR), a staging is to be presented to the population on site.

Standing in Emmenpark, an interested party can see the park as it actually is through the camera of their smartphone and also check out other virtual design ideas. These include elements such as the infrastructure, games and simply all kinds of ideas that only exist virtually at this point in time.

Prototype for planning

The research project of the Lucerne University is primarily about how Emmenpark can be used with the AR as part of the downstream participation in park design. The overarching aim of the project is to try out fundamentally new approaches to urban planning and participation using AR.

The promise of such an AR planning tool lies in the fact that users do not have to reactively deal with a given situation only after the completion of a redesign, but that they have a say early on in the process and, like professional planners, grow together with and during the process through active creative participation and involvement. This allows them to have a significant influence on the outcome. In this way, people can directly shape their built environment and identify with it. Emmenpark thus serves as a prototype.

This preliminary project examines the potential of AR as a design and planning tool in a first practice-oriented step based on the design of Emmenpark in collaboration with the municipality of Emmen, Lucerne North, the CityScienceLab in Hamburg and the planning team. The results of the module will be presented to the public at a public participation and information event in Emmenpark in June 2021, says lecturer Tobias Matter.

Source: Zentralplus / HSLU