Constraints, Not Freedom: Designing Virtual Environments for Distributed Co-Creation
A poster and live-demo presentation at the IMMERSE Symposium 2026 (April 28-29, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), introducing five productive constraint patterns - spatial, propositional, relational, technical, thematic - as a typology for designing user-generated-content systems. Drawing on a decade of design-research across Nicosia International Airport VE ↗, C.H.A.I.N. 3 ↗, Soap Soup ↗, the Haunted PS1 ↗ demo discs, and Wikar ↗, the work argues that maximizing user freedom can paradoxically undermine the creative economy in which participants engage. The booth presented two live demos: Soap Soup (technical constraint) on a CRT and the Nicosia Airport VE (propositional constraint) on a laptop. Supplement page ↗ hosts the full abstract, partner credits, analogous-pattern links, and project context.
Related Projects
Are Surveys Necessary? Designing Virtual Environments for Participatory Research
A prototype Virtual Environment (VE) designed as an immersive online 'guest book' where hundreds of users could asynchronously decorate a shared virtual space and leave messages for one another. I developed this VE for a workshop on the intangible cultural heritage of Córdoba's communal patios, introducing key design strategies for asynchronous interaction ('claims' and 'traces') and a novel workflow using Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate qualitative coding and moderation of text contributions. Published as a book chapter in the 2025 Bloomsbury Academic volume, Clever Design in Critical Times: Conceptualizing the Callidocene, arguing that interactive VEs can serve as effective tools for participatory research beyond traditional surveys in the Digital Humanities. The book is available from Bloomsbury Academic.
Soap Soup: Sodium
An atmospheric exploration game created for the 2024 SOAP SOUP collaboration, a modding project where artists create abstract rooms using a fixed set of elements. My entry is a sensory experience that places the player in a sodium-lit parking lot on a midsummer night. I designed a soundscape of cicadas and a distant storm, and used spherical projection mapping for the visuals, focusing on creating a realistic and immersive atmosphere of warm light and deep shadow.
Spaces of Nature/Natures of Space Symposium
A graphic identity and website designed for the 'Spaces of Nature/Natures of Space' graduate student symposium. I created the event's visual identity and designed the official website while co-organizing the symposium with Taisuke Wakabayashi at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. During the symposium, held on February 14, 2025, I presented an early draft of my research paper, 'The Interpretive Nature of Space: Generative Ambiguity in Heritage Visualization'. Abstract In architectural representation, the tension between objectivity and ambiguity opens space for interpretive engagement. Yet contemporary digital visualization practices increasingly prioritize photorealism—a pursuit that, as Lefebvre cautions, risks reducing lived space to a superficial spectacle. Drawing on research conducted at Cyprus's Virtual Environments Laboratory, this paper contends that the nature of space emerges not through visual mimesis but through the generative potential of representational ambiguity. Such an approach aligns virtual reconstructions with the deeper intellectual and cultural aims of the Digital Humanities. The Nicosia International Airport (1968), abandoned in Cyprus's UN buffer zone since 1974, exemplifies the interpretive challenges of modern architectural heritage. Here, meaning is negotiated between design intent, built form, and lived experience. More than a modernist relic of Cyprus's post-colonial aspirations, the site's abrupt abandonment transformed it into a time capsule of what de Certeau terms 'spatial practices': public terraces and amenities overlooking the tarmac once fostered forms of social life unimaginable in today's airports. With these practices now confined to living memory, methodologies are needed that integrate experiential knowledge with conventional documentation.To address this gap, we developed an approach to heritage visualization through a year-long museum installation featuring a virtual reconstruction of the airport set in 1969. By embedding carefully designed 'interpretation gaps'—strategic ambiguities in the visualization—we created a system that invites visitors to actively bridge these gaps through their contributions: memories, media, and historical knowledge. In this way, the virtual environment becomes both a research instrument and a medium for collective storytelling, supporting rather than supplanting the social practices that sustain collective memory.
Creativity in Modern Heritage: A Doctoral Symposium
An interdisciplinary doctoral symposium on modern heritage that I co-chaired and designed the website for. Held on May 7, 2026 at Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, the event featured a keynote lecture by Hi'ilei Julia Hobart (Yale) and six papers, jointly supported by the PhD Programs in Architecture and Landscape Architecture and History + Theory + Preservation, with co-sponsors including the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the Environmental Humanities Research Cluster, the American Indian Studies Program, and the Sawyer Seminars. I also presented my paper, 'Propositional Modeling for Digital Heritage: Committed Artifacts, Situated Knowledges,' at the symposium.