Hasta La Ideas

British photographer Rod Edwards has combined 360-degree photography with videos, interviews and drawings to create an immersive tour of Mikhail Riches’ Stirling Prize-winning Goldsmith Street housing project.

Edwards captured eight photos of the 105 low-energy homes that UK architecture studio Mikhail Riches designed to form the tour. Users can navigate between the photos either on the video above or while wearing a VR headset.

Along with the 360-degree imagery, the project includes drawings and clickable points that reveal information about the social housing project.

“Letterboxes are built into external brick porches, rather than the front doors, to avoid draughts or heat loss,” one point said for example.

Built by contractor RG Carter Construction for Norwich City Council, the Goldsmith Street housing project won last year’s Stirling Prize – RIBA‘s annual award for the best building in the UK.

Also embedded in the tour is a video interview with the architects, along with videos explaining the project made by RIBA, Norwich City Council and the Architects’ Journal.

Virtual architecture tours have increased in popularity since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as visiting buildings in person has become largely impossible.

Edwards believes that the popularity of VR and 360-degree tours to explore and understand architecture will continue to increase after the pandemic.

“High quality, interactive 360 virtual tours and VR imagery are the perfect media to showcase and share current and past architectural projects,” he told Dezeen.

“Traditional stills and video do have their uses, but they also have their limitations,” he continued. “360 virtual tours can incorporate all forms of visual storytelling for a high impact, interactive, fully immersive multimedia experience.”

“There is no better way to experience the light, space, feel and atmosphere, other than actually being there in person.”

Edwards used a Canon DSLR with a fisheye lens and a special rotating 360 panoramic tripod head to capture the photos used in the tour.

He has previously created an immersive tour of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed extension to the Tate Modern art gallery.

In the past Dezeen has created 360-degree videos of several buildings including the Colour Palace by Yinka Ilori and Pricegore in London, Olafur Eliasson’s Fjordenhus in Denmark and JKMM Architects’ Amos Rex art museum in Helsinki.

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