Editor's Note: George Agnew is an unlicensed architect and designer working in New York. His Blog, The Architecture of Fear, focuses on how security changes the built world we live in. George's post is the second in our special feature section, where we offer a voice to those outside of The Functionality.

Through Archipreneur I came across an amazing demonstration of Augmented Reality (AR). It reminds me of an article I saw on Wired about how the Department of Defense (DOD) has test programs where they are trying to identify buildings on the fly. Now we must not only consider the physical attributes of a space but also the meta or virtual attributes which can be ascribed by anyone. Just think, if you piss someone off, they tag your building as a terrorist weapon cache with their mobile phone, the next time a drone flies overhead, you might have a small problem!

This specific example uses SketchUp with a plugin from Inglobe Technologies (not free unfortunately but not as expensive as you’d think). I’ve noticed a steady increase in the use of camera matching in video whether in professionally done television promos or amateur architecture videos. When done well the images can be quite compelling. The difference here is that Augmented Reality is the application of this in real time. Keep in mind that you could do this from your home computer with about $100 in software: 

Think virtual reality minus the goggles, crappy helmet and the quasi-hi tech pod in some lab (ok maybe that’s how I picture it) and imagine walking around on the street or in the countryside. Now if you feel like you might look a little stupid walking around with your laptop open fear not, concurrent to this development of desktop AR is “Mobile Augmented Reality”. As demonstrated in the video that led this post, by this app called Wikitude on the Google Android mobile phone platform.

With mobile phone companies pushing downloadable content to phones, it’s not difficult to imagine these two streams of AR coming together. Design and develop your own objects which can be downloaded to your phone (data) and then using your phone (software) you can apply it to anywhere you go (the real world).