Overview

An interdisciplinary team led by The Bartlett School of Architecture, together with Tohoku University, will examine the future of workspaces and the rapid organisational change and its potential risks, driven by advances in AI and the next generation of XR devices.

A massive convergence is taking place between workplace architecture, organisational knowledge interfaces, and the new generation of AI-enabled virtual assistants, driven by advances in AI, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). At the same time, the real estate of workplaces is undergoing radical shifts, spurred by co-working models and the rise of hybrid working, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The next generation of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) devices, such as Oculus Rift and Apple Vision, combined with middleware customisation, is blending the virtual and physical workplace, extending it into homes and third spaces like coffee shops.

Through a human-centred, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue, this partnership aims to shape the future of workspaces – real, virtual and hybrid – to enhance wellbeing and productivity. Its focus on space and interaction, in the context of global digital transformation, will contribute to the fields of architecture, engineering and AI as part of this global engagement project.

Partnership

This collaboration will bring together two centres of excellence:

1) Architectural space and computation research (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL), and its extensive research in understanding the way that the design of the built environment affects the patterns of social and economic behaviour of organisations and communities. The collaboration will extend the research area on workspace and interactions through the lens of computation and human building interaction.

2) the new Interdisciplinary ICT Research Center for Cyber and Real Spaces (Tohoku, Japan), and its unique expertise in intelligent and interactive workspaces, multimodal interaction in virtual reality, spatial/surface interaction techniques.

Together, this interdisciplinary team will examine the paradox of rapid organisational change and its risks, creating a taxonomy of solutions. They will also explore collaborative funding opportunities to develop a research roadmap between the two institutions.

Lead:
Professor Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

Co-applicants:
Professor Alan Penn
Stamatios Psarras

Team:
Chunling Wu

Tohoku University

Principle Investigator:
Associate Professor Kazuyuki Fujita - Research Institute of Electrical Communication

Co-Lead
Prof Yoshifumi Kitamura - Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary ICT Research Center for Cyber and Real Spaces, Research Institute of Electrical Communication

Team
Miao Cheng, Assistant Professor, Research Institute of Electrical Communication 

UCL-Tohoku University Strategic Partner Funds 2024-25

The Bartlett: December 2024 – July 2025
Tohuku University: April 2025 – March 2026

Phase 1: two main activities, one in Japan and one in London.

Phase 2: Phase 1 will lead into a final integration of all insights into a joint strategic roadmap for future funding. This will be beyond the timescale of this project.

  • Fatah gen Schieck A. , Alavi H.S. , Zielinska-Dabkowska K. , Tajadura-Jiménez A., Ward J.A., Bianchi-Berthouze N., 2025, Editorial: Re-imagining mediated human building interaction and sensory environments. In: Frontiers in Computer Science. Volume 7. DOI=10.3389/fcomp.2025.1603742. ISSN=2624-9898
  • Papadopoulou, I., Fatah gen Schieck, A., and Tarabishy S., 2025, ARchive: Human Building Interaction through lived archival systems across space and time, in progress…
  • Fatah gen. Schieck, A., Berthouze, N., Tajadura-Jimenez, A., Alavi, H., Ward, J., (Eds.), 2024, Re-Imagining Mediated Human Building Interaction and Sensory Environments. A Full Issue of Frontiers in Computer Science.
  • Alavi, H.S., Churchill, E.F., Wiberg, M., Lalanne, D., Dalsgaard, P., - Fatah gen. Schieck, A., Rogers, Y. (2019). Introduction to human-building interaction (HBI): Interfacing HCI with architecture and urban design. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 26 (2).

Image: Co-generated using AI