🗣XR Interview: Andreea Ion Cojocaru, NUMENA

Welcome to the #VirtualLibrary. Here’s our latest ‘XR Interview’ — a collection of the best & brightest in virtual reality, uncovering their stories & documenting their insights into all things immersive.

Andreea is a coder and co-founder/CEO at NUMENA: an award-winning creative studio working at the intersection of immersive technology and architecture. She is a frequent guest speaker on virtual reality and its relationship to traditional building/design projects.

What was your first ever encounter with immersive technology? What was it like?

A friend of mine got invited to visit a VR studio in Stuttgart. He couldn’t make it so I went instead. I saw a demo for a marketing experience for Audi on a DK2 and I was blown away. It was the closest thing I have ever had to a religious experience or an epiphany. As amazing as that was, the architect in me also saw things in the approach to spatial experience and design that were not explored to their full potential. I immediately found things I knew I could improve on. So four weeks later I quit my job as a project manager at an architecture studio and started to learn Unity. Six months later I had my first client. I must also add that I was always passionate about coding, but never found a way to combine it meaningfully with architecture beyond hobby projects. In this regard, VR felt like something that was made for me. It was the ultimate combination of spatial design and programming.

What’s the coolest thing about your job?

I get to be blown away by the magic that is VR every time I put the headset on, which is all day long. For some people, the magic can fade and they need more and more to be impressed. I can still spend hours around a virtual cube and be mesmerized by the experience.

What about your work in the XR industry might surprise people?

Our studio designs both interactive VR experiences like simulators and physical architecture. We are a team of architects who also code and we strongly believe that isolated disciplines are a thing of the past. The idea that someone can practice in two fields that are perceived to be so different from each other surprises people. Architecture and programming have their own specialized knowledge, but there is also overlap, at least from the point of view of our workflow. Both physical buildings and virtual applications have at their core a concept about space and a concept about human centered experience. This is what we specialize in.

What do you wish you could change about your industry?

We need to make it easier for people outside the industry to understand what VR is about. There is too much confusion, hype and conflicting information out there about VR hardware and software. The chaotic excitement, lack of standards and plethora of available headsets is part of the fun in the early days of any new technology, but the lack of clarity and cohesive strategy is also making things difficult for new adopters and is harming developers.

What’s been your proudest moment at Numena?

We got international recognition through awards and nominations for all our large VR projects. For a young and experimental studio like ours, this is a monumental achievement. As traditionally trained architects, we proved that we can bring a new vision to the table in a field still dominated by specialists from the gaming industry.

What makes a great VR/360 experience? Can it be defined?

What makes a good building? In architecture school we learn that our craft is special because it has to combine an artistic and aesthetic vision with the rigors of practicality and technical skill. I would say the same thing about a good VR experience. It needs a level of visual polish, but it also needs to perform. It needs to give the user something that they didn’t have before they put the headset on, whether that is a new skill, peace of mind or 30 minutes of fun.

Numena works on architectural projects both real & virtual. Do you approach the two differently?

The two types of projects complement each other in interesting ways and this is a relationship we are still exploring. For example, one of my personal goals is to design virtual environments (virtual architecture as we call it) that are dynamic and interactive. (Approaching environments as static backgrounds is, in my opinion, one of the things we should not carry over from flat video games into VR.) On the other hand, designing dynamic environments feels like the revenge of the traditional architect in me, an escape from the tyrannical immobility of real brick & concrete. But funny enough, the one thing that moves in real architecture has become my main design component in VR: light & shadows.

Any parting words of advice?

I haven’t been given much advise and I don’t usually give any. I find people and situations too wildly different from one another. I am, however, always happy to help people who reach out to me find solutions to specific problems.

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