Kilograph Wins CGarchitect Architectural 3D Award

Suspension House showcased a unique blend of 3D audio, gaze cues and exploration-based triggers. The award was presented live during a presentation ceremony at the d2 conference in Vienna.

The Suspension House project takes viewers to a remote part of the Napa Valley, where a modern home seems to hover above a creek. As the viewer explores the house and its surroundings, they can trigger changes to the weather and time of day to provide a wider picture of what it would be like to live there.

The collaboration between Kilograph and Fougeron Architecture was designed to showcase a natural environment working with a structure, instead of against it. To illustrate this relationship, the experience portrays the house in nature’s many states, mixing storytelling with multi-sensory applications to enhance the immersiveness. Since VR becomes more memorable as new senses are added, Kilograph looked for ways to move beyond sight. In Suspension House, the extra sense is 3D sound, which operates around the viewer by way of birds, rain, a radio and more, all firing at the proper distance and volume.

Gaze-based navigation, inspired by some of Kilograph’s favorite games, can also be used to teleport around the environment. With Suspension House, the goal was to design an experience that didn’t use controllers, leading the team to create visual icons that would appear when a viewer looked in their direction. Featuring universal symbols like a bed for the bedroom and a sofa for the living room, these icons not only let viewers zip around the experience, but interact with different elements like the radio, which can be turned on and off with their eyes.

“Kilograph is at our best when we get to be creative, and we had a lot of leeway on this project,” said Keely Colcleugh, founder and CEO of Kilograph. “To be recognized for an experiment is a total thrill, and only gives us more motivation to keep pushing the boundaries of unbuilt applications.”

The Suspension House project team included: Juan Carlos Ramos Figueroa, Chris Kiser, Jackson Doherty, Lienny Ruiz, John Michael Wilyat, Erick Schiele, Josh Neiman, and Denzil Maher. Suspension House will be on display at the A+D Museum Wireframes exhibit, appearing September 8 - November 25 in Los Angeles.