Imagine a near-future ‘superimposition’ - a collision or overlay of two spaces; one the tangible reality of a site, and the other a virtually rendered world. The age of personalized media we are entering risks producing ‘experience silos’ - where each individual’s tailored and self-affirming reality creates a condition of ever-increasing polarisation. When the films we watch, the news we read, the people we meet, are suggested and surveilled by algorithms that are getting frighteningly good at predicting our preferences and biases, how do we as societies form the common ground and establish shared realities?

Photogrammetry, real-time raytracing, AI computer vision, and classification, all of these are technologies of the now, not of science fiction. We are already almost at the stage where we can overlay high-resolution renderings of virtual environments, objects, and characters over the physical spaces we inhabit.

As architects, we are commonly tasked with designing communal spaces and experiences. Immaterial phenomena such as temperature, sound, and light have long been within the architectural designer’s toolkit and virtual overlays are just another medium through which to shape experience.