Digital Twins and Virtual Architecture

Abstract

Since the mid-20th century, developments in computing and digital technologies have fundamentally reshaped the ways in which the built environment and territorial spaces are represented, while also altering how urban areas are conceptualized, constructed, and managed. In conjunction with broader shifts in social, political, and economic dynamics, these technological advances have fostered the growing digitization and datafication of architecture and urban governance, as reflected in concepts such as “virtual architecture” and “urban digital twins.”

Virtual architecture refers to the creation of digital models of buildings and structures, primarily for design and pre-construction analysis. These models are often static, developed and visualized with tools such as building information modeling and virtual and/or augmented reality to enable architects and designers to explore design alternatives, assess aesthetic and functional aspects, and communicate ideas before physical construction begins.

The notion of “digital twin” refers to dynamic, real-time virtual replicas of physical systems, integrating data from sensors and internet-of-things devices to mirror and simulate the behavior of urban infrastructures or whole cities. Digital twins are primarily characterized by their expected capacity for continuous data integration, real-time analytics and bidirectional feedback loops between the physical and virtual environments. Originally developed in the manufacturing industry, digital twins were translated into the urban realm, where they can be used to monitor traffic flows, energy consumption, and different environmental conditions (e.g., air pollution or flood risks), to allow city planners and stakeholders to respond to emerging challenges. It should be noted, however, that despite the high expectations and attention given to digital twins by industry, academia, and governmental agencies, the concept is marked by a variety of interpretations. In particular, the emphasis on real-time synchronization is often described as an ideal, one that is hardly found in practice in urban digital twin projects.

Although they exhibit key differences in terms of scale, temporal dynamics, data integration, and primary applications, virtual architecture and digital twins can be analyzed and discussed together as part of long-standing evolutions in technical advances for representing and governing urban areas and conceptual approaches to considering cities and their desirable representation and governance through digital technologies. Tracing their genealogy among technical advances associated with ideational frameworks, ranging from cybernetics to the smart city, opens up avenues for critical perspectives on their implementation in urban planning and governance.

Critically scrutinized in such a way, digital twins and virtual architecture appear fundamentally intertwined with issues of knowledge production and power dynamics. The technologies that constitute them actively shape not only what is deemed knowable, governable, and ultimately desirable or not in the physical world, but also how urban environments are effectively known, governed, and considered desirable. Furthermore, they are inextricably linked to a distinct political-economic logic: that of platforms, which involves new constraints and dependencies within emerging, often global, technoscientific markets, as well as the reconfiguration of power relations in urban contexts. In this sense, virtual architecture and digital twins construct specific decision-making pathways, foster constant but often non-transformative change in urban governance, and raise crucial issues regarding public mastery and sovereignty over privately owned data infrastructures.