Breaking Glass III - Virtual Space is the last symposium in a series of three commenced in 2018 and hosted by Städelschule in Frankfurt on the emerging role of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in architecture and the art. The three-day symposium addresses the manifold complexities and creative opportunities in virtual space that AR and VR offer architecture and the arts. The symposium brings together practitioners and theorists from a wide range of fields, including architecture, the arts, philosophy and neuroscience.

Through presentations and conversations, the three-day symposium will explore the contemporary status and future of AR and VR in architecture and the art with regards to our perception and inhabitation of space. With renewed impact of technology on the disciplines, the stakes in individual and collective ownership of space are open, the inherent structure of creative work must be re-examined, and the idea of reality itself is re-shuffled. Corporeal existences has been thrown on the scale with virtual ones, and the boundaries for how we understand perceptional dynamics are shifting. The immersive space of AR and VR re-dress the phenomenon of the “virtual,” a dimension of lived experience that in turn queries the notion of the “real.” Breaking Glass III addresses this complex and multi-facetted space and attempts to relate this to our corporeal, lived experience.