AR4CUP 2019 H2020

Current status \ Completed (January 2019 / December 2019)
Funding programme \ EU Horizon 2020 EIT Digital
Project budget \ €529.271  (Labsimurb budget €153.750 )

Keywords \ Augmented Reality, Experiential Simulation, Co-Creation, Urban Design

AR4CUP   « Augmented Reality for Collaborative Urban Planning »


Project Overview – 2019

AR4CUP-2019 project is part of H2020 EIT Digital (Digital Cities) EU Project. In a nutshell, it is based on the use of experiential simulation through Augmented Reality (AR) for anticipating and pre-assessing urban design projects from people perspectives. An experimental application will be carried out on the C40 Reinventing City project “VITAE” (Serio area in the South Milan) by Covivio Development, Carlo Ratti Associati, Habitech (as main partners). The partners involved in AR4CUP EU Project are: Artefacto (FR), Politecnico di Milano with Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, VTT and Covivio.

More in detail, the AR4CUP project aims at pushing on the market a new SAAS product (Software As A Service) that will enable to show urban projects in Augmented Reality (AR) on-site in order to enable citizens and decision-makers to collaborate with architects and developers to a virtuous co-creation process.  Data collection and analysis of environmental preferences through the app will inform the transformation along the design phase.  The process will empower inclusiveness and encourages evidence-based decision making.

The service will allow:

  • Real Estate (RE) developers, architectural offices,  Public Administrations to communicate urban projects along the design phase using 1 to 1 scale virtual models in Augmented Reality
  • To benefit from a virtuous co-creation service that involves citizens and stakeholders (i.e. by collecting users’ feedback, comments, activity, etc.)
  • Citizens to be informed and involved in the process, and to react to urban project proposals before construction

The AR4CUP app will pay special attention to the quality of the representation of urban projects in their context, to the setting up of a fluid navigation in motion and to the setting up of optimized management of occultations in dynamic contexts (Diminished Reality). Data analysis tools to get users’ feedback and reactions to the urban transformation will be integrated into the service in order to support designers to improve their urban projects on the basis of relevant metrics. The entire procedure aims at facilitating the collaboration among final users, stakeholders, and Public Administrator in order to create a virtuous process that contributes to reduce the risk of failure towards the co-creation of the future of cities.

More info at the dedicated AR4CUP web-site


Pilot Case Study Application \ “Experiencing VITAE”

VITAE by Covivio is one of the winning projects of the Reinventing Cities competition promoted by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group for the redevelopment of an urban zone in Milan, namely the Serio area in the Porta Romana district in the south of Milan (Italy). This AR4CUP pilot case study application is based on this urban design project by Covivio, Carlo Ratti Association, Habitech, and other partners, including Politecnico di Milano (Department of Architecture and Urban Studies – Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti).

more info


Team, partners and stakeholders

The partners involved are: Artefacto (FR), Politecnico di Milano (DAStU) with Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, VTT and Covivio.

LABSIMURB TEAM \ Barbara Piga (POLIMI Coordinator), responsible for the app co-design methodology for urban design applications, the app mockup, and the study of urban planning procedures for design projects approvals at the European level
with Marco BoffiMarika FiorNicola Rainisio, Gabriele Stancato
Research Structure: Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti


News, outputs, and other materials

AR4CUP won the LAVAL AWARD EUROPE 2021 (23rd edition) as the best project of the “Service” category as XR4CUP!!!

Video presenting the AR4CUP 2019 project

AR4CUP-2019 flyer

A new feature of AR4CUP will be developed in 2020 within the framework of EIT Digital – Digital Cities! Discover more on AR4CUP-2020


This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the grant agreement EIT Digital 2019 AR4CUP | Augmented Reality for Collaborative Urban Planning – The sole responsibility of this publication lies with the author. The European Union is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.