@inproceedings{salaberria-etal-2026-virtual,
title = "A Virtual Assistant for Architectural Design in a {VR} Environment",
author = "Salaberria, Ander and
Ijurco, Oier and
Ferro, Markel and
Wang, Jiayuan and
Mu{\~n}oz, I{\~n}igo Vil{\'a} and
de Ioris, Roberto and
Barnes, Jeremy and
Lacalle, Oier Lopez De",
editor = "Croce, Danilo and
Leidner, Jochen and
Moosavi, Nafise Sadat",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the {E}uropean Chapter of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations)",
month = mar,
year = "2026",
address = "Rabat, Marocco",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-demo.38/",
pages = "550--562",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-382-1",
abstract = "Architectural design relies on 3D modeling procedures, generally carried out in Building Information Modeling (BIM) formats. In this setting, architects and designers collaborate on building designs, iterating over many possible versions until a final design is agreed upon. However, this iteration is complicated by the fact that any changes need to be made by manually introducing changes to the complex BIM files, which lengthens the design process and makes it difficult to quickly prototype changes. To speed up prototyping, we propose VR-Arch, a virtual assistant that allows users to interact with the BIM file in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This framework enables users to 1) make changes directly in the VR environment, 2) make complex queries about the BIM, and 3) combine these to perform more complex actions. All of this is done via voice commands and processed through a ReAct-based agentic system that selects appropriate tools depending on the query context.This multi-tool approach enables real-time, contextualized interaction through natural language, allowing for a faster and more natural prototyping experience."
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<abstract>Architectural design relies on 3D modeling procedures, generally carried out in Building Information Modeling (BIM) formats. In this setting, architects and designers collaborate on building designs, iterating over many possible versions until a final design is agreed upon. However, this iteration is complicated by the fact that any changes need to be made by manually introducing changes to the complex BIM files, which lengthens the design process and makes it difficult to quickly prototype changes. To speed up prototyping, we propose VR-Arch, a virtual assistant that allows users to interact with the BIM file in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This framework enables users to 1) make changes directly in the VR environment, 2) make complex queries about the BIM, and 3) combine these to perform more complex actions. All of this is done via voice commands and processed through a ReAct-based agentic system that selects appropriate tools depending on the query context.This multi-tool approach enables real-time, contextualized interaction through natural language, allowing for a faster and more natural prototyping experience.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T A Virtual Assistant for Architectural Design in a VR Environment
%A Salaberria, Ander
%A Ijurco, Oier
%A Ferro, Markel
%A Wang, Jiayuan
%A Muñoz, Iñigo Vilá
%A de Ioris, Roberto
%A Barnes, Jeremy
%A Lacalle, Oier Lopez De
%Y Croce, Danilo
%Y Leidner, Jochen
%Y Moosavi, Nafise Sadat
%S Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations)
%D 2026
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Rabat, Marocco
%@ 979-8-89176-382-1
%F salaberria-etal-2026-virtual
%X Architectural design relies on 3D modeling procedures, generally carried out in Building Information Modeling (BIM) formats. In this setting, architects and designers collaborate on building designs, iterating over many possible versions until a final design is agreed upon. However, this iteration is complicated by the fact that any changes need to be made by manually introducing changes to the complex BIM files, which lengthens the design process and makes it difficult to quickly prototype changes. To speed up prototyping, we propose VR-Arch, a virtual assistant that allows users to interact with the BIM file in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This framework enables users to 1) make changes directly in the VR environment, 2) make complex queries about the BIM, and 3) combine these to perform more complex actions. All of this is done via voice commands and processed through a ReAct-based agentic system that selects appropriate tools depending on the query context.This multi-tool approach enables real-time, contextualized interaction through natural language, allowing for a faster and more natural prototyping experience.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-demo.38/
%P 550-562
Markdown (Informal)
[A Virtual Assistant for Architectural Design in a VR Environment](https://aclanthology.org/2026.eacl-demo.38/) (Salaberria et al., EACL 2026)
ACL
- Ander Salaberria, Oier Ijurco, Markel Ferro, Jiayuan Wang, Iñigo Vilá Muñoz, Roberto de Ioris, Jeremy Barnes, and Oier Lopez De Lacalle. 2026. A Virtual Assistant for Architectural Design in a VR Environment. In Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 3: System Demonstrations), pages 550–562, Rabat, Marocco. Association for Computational Linguistics.