Professor Aki Ishida was recognized nationally with Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 2023 Creative Achievement Award for her work, “Reenvisioning Everyday Architecture: Experiments in Visual Mapping and Hybrid Media.” The project, which was developed with students in Ishida’s 2021/22 B. Arch Thesis Concentration Area studio, applied inquiry and representation methods from her healthcare design research.

 In the project description, she writes:

“As the landscapes of domestic life, remote work, healthcare, and other social norms shift, how does architecture respond? Through architectural ethnography and augmented reality, a group of 13 thesis students at Virginia Tech uncovered opportunities for reenvisioning everyday architecture from the perspective of the inhabitants…In early Spring, the group held an exhibit in Virginia Tech’s Cube, a blackbox theater designed for augmented environment experimentations, to experiment with projection mapping on physical models and video projection on cyclorama. These immersive environments, combined with ethnography, facilitated imagination of what is possible—or new realities—in everyday architecture.”

ACSA Creative Achievement Award annually recognizes a specific creative achievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research, or service that advances architectural education.