Mette Ramsgard Thomsen
PhD study: The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, Dept. of Computer Science
m.thomsen@cs.ucl.ac.uk

As our society becomes increasingly connected by means of information and communication technologies we come to exist in an environment where a mediated condition is intrinsically interwoven with our physical surroundings. This paper addresses the habitation of spaces that integrate information and communication technologies ? Mixed Realities. 

Relating the fields of architecture and computer science the paper seeks to question the existing approach to Mixed Realities. Current examples of Mixed Reality systems superimpose the display of the 3 dimensional virtual construct upon the real in a seamless act of integration. This act simultaneously re-constructs the real as belonging to the same Euclidean dimensions. Architecture has throughout modernity been involved in the re-evaluation of the Euclidean concept of space. Binding, folding, grafting architecture with the events that take place within it, space is proposed as that which is derived at through inhabitation and experience. 

The proposition put forward here is that by placing Mixed Reality within the architectural debate of the event of space, the emphasis of Mixed Reality shifts from that of seamless superimposition to interaction. Bridging virtual and real, interaction forges the development of a relationship between the users presence in physical space and a new derived presence experienced through the system. Interaction becomes that which mixes, joins and grafts the experience of the virtual with that of the physical. Spatial experience in Mixed Reality becomes a construct tied to the event of, and the presence and individuality of, the perceiving subject.