Skender Modular Units + VIM Augmented Reality App

• 40% faster modular construction
• Natural, shared AR collaboration
• Real-time visualization on site

Skender selected VIM's augmented reality application, powered by Magic Leap, to give project teams and clients a shared way to experience its modular units before construction finishes. Stacy Scopano, Skender's Chief Technology Officer, had found that many virtual reality experiences created an awkward disconnect between a presenter walking a headset-wearing audience through a model and everyone else in the room.

Magic Leap's augmented reality approach avoids that isolation: because it overlays digital content onto the real physical space rather than replacing it entirely, everyone present can see and discuss the same augmented environment together. That natural, shared collaboration was the deciding factor for Skender, whose Chief Design Officer Tim Swanson has framed modular manufacturing itself as a way to deliver buildings roughly 40 percent faster than conventional construction methods.

Skender set out to build modular units for two sizable multifamily developments at once, a 10-story, 144-unit building in Uptown Chicago and a 7-story, 122-unit building in West Loop, while promising to deliver them roughly 40 percent faster than conventional construction. Meeting that timeline depended on manufacturing units off-site while keeping architects, engineers, sales teams, and clients aligned on a design that wasn't yet physically built.

Conventional virtual reality tools, the team's default way to preview a modular unit before it existed, isolated each viewer inside a separate headset experience, making it difficult for a room full of stakeholders to review the same design together and raise questions or changes in real time.

Before adopting Magic Leap-powered augmented reality, project teams evaluating modular units like Skender's typically relied on conventional virtual reality walkthroughs or static renderings and physical mockups to preview a finished space.

Conventional VR sessions isolated each participant inside their own headset-driven environment, and Stacy Scopano, Skender's Chief Technology Officer, has described the resulting experience as creating an awkward disconnect between whoever was presenting the model and everyone else in the room trying to follow along.

That isolation made it harder for stakeholders, designers, and construction teams to discuss a modular unit's design together in real time while units were still being manufactured off-site.

Pairing modular manufacturing with VIM's Magic Leap-powered augmented reality gave Skender's team and clients a way to review finished units together while units were still being built off-site, rather than after delivery. Because the experience overlays digital content directly onto physical space instead of isolating each viewer in a separate headset session, stakeholders could walk through the same augmented environment side by side, catching design questions and making decisions in real time instead of working through disconnected, one-at-a-time presentations.

That faster, more collaborative review process complemented Skender's broader modular strategy, which Chief Design Officer Tim Swanson has said lets the company deliver buildings roughly 40 percent faster than conventional construction while holding to a higher standard.