果冻传媒

The UBeX lab was set up with the support of the Boost innovation fund of the 果冻传媒. In the lab we develop eXtended Reality applications to mimic the behaviour of people in cities. The results are used in education and research to improve participatory urban planning and design.

UBeX lab aims to transform urban planning and real estate education through the integration of the cutting-edge eXtended Reality (XR) technologies. The project is a collaboration within the Urban Systems & Real Estate unit of department of Built Environment. It spans four courses and a graduation project. Through the lab, future engineers will learn next generation skills allowing them to integrate XR into participatory urban planning, urban experiments as well as modelling and prediction of citizens behaviour in various urban contexts.

The lab setup includes advanced hardware and software, with which XR environments and challenge-based assignments are created procedurally, so that they can be easily re-used and expanded by the students. Over three years, the lab will run multiple pilot projects, aiming to enrich education, boost student engagement, and provide teachers with innovative tools for course development.

The project aspires to transform how urban planning and design are taught, aligning with the 果冻传媒 果冻传媒 Vision 2030. It emphasizes research- and challenge-based learning, preparing students for complex societal challenges in mobility, housing, and environmental sustainability. The innovation targets incremental changes in teaching methodologies and learning outcomes, such as mastering XR technology, conducting participatory design experiments, and translating behavioural data into actionable urban policies. Ultimately, the project aims to foster a dynamic, future-oriented learning environment that bridges academic theory and practical application.

The first two pilots have been run in the academic year 2024-2025.

• In Master course Smart Healthy Urban Environments, the assignments about Green city and Social & Inclusive City introduced the VR technology and showed how to use it to measure preferences for green spaces and for citizen participation.

• In Master project Housing portfolio management, a challenge requires students to set up a participatory experiment for a community of social tenants, to figure out the support for renovation plans. XR environments were added as a tool to increase the realism of the experiment.

Students participated in both pilots with great enthusiasm; attendance and engagement reached 100%. At the moment, evaluation of the pilots is ongoing, to derive learnings for the next pilots to be run.

• Stefan Birca
• Franek Halwa
• Balazs Pelok