Squint/Opera, the creative studio, has created a digital twin of Here East, an innovation and technology campus in London.
Here East is situated in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and began as a vehicle for change and development in East London following the 2012 Olympics. Today, some 6,000 people study and work on the campus. There are two sites for V&A East, with a new museum and a collection and research centre, plus organisations such as UCL, BT Sport, and Scope (to name just a few) as tenants.
The organisation is rooted in innovation, and in keeping with this commitment commissioned Squint/Opera to create a Digital Twin of the campus. This was to be used as a communication tool when giving presentations about the campus and would facilitate remote viewing.
Squint Opera’s brief was to develop a digital twin of Here East in real-time immersive 3D, using Unreal Engine. The firm was also asked to create a narrative as part of the twin, which would share the campus’s history. This would tell its origin story, talk about its people, and explore how it affects the local and national economy.
New narrative strategies
As a leading force in technology and innovation, Here East is an ideal organisation for a project which explores new narrative strategies and innovative approaches to presentations.
Squint/Opera’s solution makes use of Epic’s most recent gaming engine technology, Unreal Engine 5. This replicates the campus in precise detail, allowing visitors to explore on their own terms or to follow a guided narrative.
Here East was interested in this technology and how it could be used to promote the campus and to make the tenant leasing process quicker. This would also enable the organisation to offer remote meetings, viewings and tours for international enquiries.
Squint/Opera utilised SpaceForm to offer this functionality. SpaceForm was developed around Unreal Engine 5 and offers a specialised platform for hosting digital twins.
Spaceform’s ability to generate a truly immersive meeting environment allows it to display every detail of a project to potential tenants, investors, and communities in real time. The decision-making process is quicker than for traditional communication platforms, thanks to the advanced level of detail.
Transformative technology
Gavin Poole, CEO of Here East, says: “We are delighted to have partnered with Squint/Opera to take this transformative step and develop our virtual twin. The ability to replicate our vibrant campus in a virtual forum and show people from all over the world our site, whilst having real-time conversations with them, is really unique.”
This level of realism was made possible by combining existing technical data with information acquired directly from the site. By mapping photos onto structures and adding sounds recorded at Here East into the model, Squint/Opera was able to create an authentic representation.
Animated elements such as people, cars, plants, and artificial and natural lighting bring the twin to life. The immersive experience is further enhanced by effects which simulate shifting light levels through the day, and the changing of the seasons.
Here East is planning to continue its growth into the future. In 10 years of operation, it has filled 94% of the site – which totals one million square feet. The digital twin enables the site to be recreated anywhere across the globe, and so supports the organisation’s expansion in the UK and internationally.
Alice Britton, founding director, Squint/Opera, comments: “The capability of our virtual twin to create a genuinely immersive environment for meetings enables our client to present every aspect of their project to potential tenants, investors, and communities in real-time. Here East has innovation at its heart, and together we’ve created a product that really reflects that.”
Earlier this month, Squint/Opera revealed a new series of films which it had developed for Historic Royal Palaces’ new exhibition in the Jewel House at the Tower of London.
All images courtesy of Squint/Opera
