Fifteen residents of public apartments owned by Pamplona City council participated, back in 2023, in a Virtual Reality experience where they could virtually enter into the apartments to be renovated under oPEN Lab and make choices on furniture, design etc. according to their needs.
Conclusions of the VR experience have been taken into account for decision making in the construction works and for the procurement of the furniture and equipment of the apartments.
Understanding the layout of a home on a floor plan is not always easy. Getting to see the layout, the distribution of spaces, where and how the windows and doors are placed and how the finished and furnished home would look is sometimes an impossible task. Precisely to make this task easier, University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU), with the collaboration of MiiL (Media innovation and intelligibility Lab) of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, as part of the oPEN Lab project, developed a virtual reality tool that allows the elderly to see and experience first-hand how the 12 municipal flats to be renovated in the San Pedro neighbourhood in Rochapea disctric will look.
Fifteen users of other municipal flats experimented first-hand with the design of the apartments in San Pedro and saw how the finished properties might look, thanks to this virtual reality tool.
Immersion with virtual reality allows people to feel that they are in the environment of the flat, being more aware of the spaces and being able to move around them as if they were really in the home. All of this allows a better understanding of a project that has not yet been realised and that is difficult to visualise using traditional means such as plans. After receiving a brief explanation of what virtual reality is and what it can be used for, the participants in this project put on the virtual reality glasses and, thanks to the digital tool, created what they thought would be their ideal home.
The aim of this initiative is to promote, through a relaxed and playful atmosphere, a participatory process in which the potential users of a municipal flat can communicate their needs and what they would like to have in what will be their home. With these contributions, the City Council will be able to better define the interior design of housing for the elderly, and improve its habitability and comfort.
