The boundary between the physical and the digital has never been more porous. In a world where cities are becoming laboratories of innovation, digital creativity is radically transforming our relationship to architecture, real estate, and public spaces. How, today, is digital creativity helping to rethink architecture, real estate, and public spaces?
Integrated Architecture Through Digital Tools
Today, contemporary architecture goes beyond mere physical construction: it is a living, connected experience embedded in our environment. The use of emerging technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and artificial intelligence (AI) allows infrastructures to be reimagined as interactive urban spaces. These infrastructures respond to data and now adapt to human flows. For example, some architects are using parametric design tools or AI to create organic, evolving structures optimized for natural light, wind, or user behavior. These constructions live to the rhythm of the city and adapt over time.
During the 7th edition of HUB Montreal, Angus Campbell from the British architectural firm Foster and Partners explained how digital creativity is now used within the firm, especially in research and development, to make design processes more iterative. He also noted that thanks to digital creativity, projects are now more closely integrated with the DNA of the city and its environment. He cited the example of traffic flows and how these were optimized using digital tools.
This is exemplified in the project “The Line” in Saudi Arabia, envisioned by NEOM — a 170 km-long linear city where transport, services, and housing are fully vertically integrated in a decarbonized environment managed by artificial intelligence.
Public Space Redefined by Digital Urban Art
Who hasn’t walked through a city and come across a creative, digital, and temporary mural, installation, or exhibition? Public spaces have become open-air galleries where light, sound, and data serve as expressive materials. The rise of LBE (Location-Based Experiences), tools such as video mapping, connected light installations, and interactive projections help revitalize urban spaces, evoke emotion, highlight cultural heritage, and create unique experiences.
That’s exactly what the MAPP_MTL Festival does by combining visual arts, projections, and music to transform the streets of Montreal into moving frescoes. The same goes for teamLab in Tokyo with “teamLab Borderless,” where parks and museums become fully immersive sensory experiences.
Representing cultural institutions, urban districts, nonprofits, foundations, private initiatives, and other organizations tasked with designing, funding, building, and managing urban spaces with strong cultural components, the international federation GCDN (Global Cultural Districts Network) regularly publishes research and highlights the importance of creative innovation in transforming urban spaces—where digital art plays a key role. This year, HUB Montreal and GCDN decided to join forces to place public spaces and digital creativity at the heart of discussions, with a workshop entitled “What’s Hot and What’s Not? Digital Art and Placemaking for Cultural Districts” during the GCDN’s annual congress in Los Angeles.
Experiential and Narrative Real Estate
Long seen as rigid, real estate has also reinvented itself in recent years by offering experiential spaces that tell stories. Shopping malls, office spaces, and residences are increasingly infused with digital creativity through immersive, interactive, and adaptive solutions. This is referred to as “narrative real estate,” where spaces tell stories, embody values, and offer users active roles. Through sound design, interactive systems, and immersive environments, users are transported into an atmosphere and imaginative world.
In the book Strangers Need Strange Moments Together, published by Set Margins’ (currently available for pre-order ahead of its June 12 release), Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat, co-founders of the studio Daily tous les jours, reflect on fifteen years of creating interactive experiences in public space—at the intersection of art, technology, design, and performance. By using music, dance, and storytelling to spark joy and connection among strangers, they have developed a socially engaged practice that reimagines how we collectively inhabit our cities. The book offers a thoughtful and critical perspective on urban infrastructure, exploring how digital imagination can transform public places into laboratories for more human, unexpected, and resilient forms of communal life.
Another example is “The Edge” in Amsterdam—an ultra-connected office building that redefines experiential real estate. With more than 30,000 sensors, mobile apps, and a design focused on well-being, each user experiences a personalized work environment. The space becomes alive, flexible, and intelligent—a place not just to work, but to intuitively interact with one’s surroundings.
Today, the fusion of art, technology, and urbanism goes beyond simply beautifying our surroundings—it makes them more interactive, adaptive to our needs, and full of meaning. These themes will be explored at the 9th edition of HUB Montreal as part of the “Architecture, Real Estate, and Public Spaces” programming, bringing together local and international experts and creators.
HUB MONTRÉAL THANKS ITS 2025 EDITION PARTNERS
