Data Clouds
Year
2025
Client
MIT Senseable City Lab · La Biennale di Venezia
Service
Exhibition Design · Immersive Media Design · Experience Design
The installation brings informal urban settlements into view through immersive media, data visualisation, and spatial storytelling.
© Data Clouds
Visual Storytelling Combines Digital and Physical Experience
LiDAR Scanning Point Cloud Visualisation in Houdini
The Question — Who Does Architecture Represent?
Every week, informal settlements grow by the equivalent of a city the size of Milan. Yet they remain largely absent from architectural and planning discourse. Data Clouds responds to this absence with a radical act of recognition — reframing how urbanism is represented, and whose spatial intelligence is made visible.
Using LiDAR scanning technology deployed in Vidigal, Rio de Janeiro, the project translates one of the world's most self-organised environments into a navigable, immersive experience — not a simulation, but a data-faithful translation of place.
Real-scale walkthroughs allow visitors to explore Vidigal's intricate spatial organisation as if physically present, revealing the ingenuity and resilience of communities that have shaped their own cities from the ground up.
The Design — Immersive Space, Accessible to All
The installation unfolds as a series of modular environments that dissolve the boundary between the digital and physical. Data landscapes built from LiDAR point clouds fill the immersion room, accompanied by spatial soundscapes that place visitors inside the urban fabric of Vidigal.
A tactile architectural model in the opening gallery maps the neighbourhood's physical features, making the abstract tangible.
Every design decision was shaped by accessibility — complex urban research translated into clear, jargon-free language; a narrated bilingual audio guide; and a custom-built app offering intuitive navigation and features for visually impaired visitors. The result is an exhibition that opens architectural discourse to audiences well beyond the discipline.
Prism
Norman Foster Exhibition