The term augmented reality describes the process by which, during the course of a direct or indirect visualization of the physical world, elements of this viewing are augmented with information produced by a computer that can be graphical or sound.
This term, despite the fact that describes a process that has now been largely simplified, manages to connect, in a direct way, the natural environment with the virtual environment of computers. The latter, although as seen from its name, is not reality, it is only a hypothesis, is able to be described with spatial concepts, but also to create space the rules of which, are defined fully by the designer. This may be due to the fact that the man often thinks with space as a tool, as the visualization of information expedites the perception. The fact however remains that in the intersection of the virtual environment with the physical a new situation is emerged, the boundaries and limitations of which is still blurred.
The ability of this new medium to create relationships in information, which as today was partial or even scattered in different parts of the space, can change all aspects of our daily life and to put into question the definitions that we give at concepts such as space, architecture, public environment, interaction, communication.
The attempt to approach augmented reality and to explore the relationship with architecture cannot follow a linear way. As will be shown, during the reading of this thesis 4 key conceptual axes were defined: augmented reality, architecture/space, social implications and technology.
The texts are moving on those axes or the intermediate surfaces that they define and were aimed, through the analysis of the causes that led to the creation of the augmented reality and the ways in which is implemented and working, to ‘’touch’’ the relationship between this medium and architecture and the ways in which it affects and gradually changes architecture.