HoloLab Inc. has digitally archived the interior and exterior of the “Residence Oda,” the home of chair researcher Oda Kenji, using Gaussian splatting technology. This was carried out as part of a digital archiving project being advanced by Inc Reddit.
Oda The Residence, located in Town Higashikagura, Hokkaido, is a space where masterpieces by 20th-century design masters such as Hans J. Wegner and Jacobsen Arne, as well as thousands of pieces of furniture, lighting, and everyday objects, are arranged as part of the everyday landscape. With the planned relocation of the Oda family in September 2025, this space was in danger of being lost, making digital preservation an urgent necessity, and thus this project was implemented.
Image captured by a ground-based laser scanner.
A digital space scanned with photorealistic 3D Gaussian splatting.
The Gaussian splatting technique used in this scan is a cutting-edge technology that can realistically reproduce “reflection,” “transmission,” and “light diffusion,” which were difficult to reproduce with conventional photogrammetry (a technique for generating 3D models from photographs). This processing has also succeeded in reproducing the “atmosphere” of a space, such as the sheen of wood, the gradation of light from the lighting, and the greenery outside the window.
HoloLab, which was in charge of the photography and production work, adopted a hybrid workflow combining a terrestrial laser scanner and 4,900 DSLR photographs to achieve both architectural precision and the delicate texture of the furniture. They precisely measured the five living rooms, the underground storage room, and the outdoor garden, acquiring point cloud data with millimeter-level accuracy.
Outdoor photography
The position of the indoor shooting data has been aligned.
The details of rare, masterpiece furniture and even the spines of bookshelves are reproduced, bathed in the soft sunlight filtering through the trees in Higashikawa Town.
A digitized, unadulterated depiction of Oda’s everyday life, sitting at his study table.
The resulting image achieves a resolution that allows the spines of each book on the bookshelf in the study to be clearly visible. Furthermore, a 3D model of Oda himself, conducting research in his study, is superimposed onto the data, creating a record that retains a sense of human presence in the space.
The Oda Collection Support Association is considering making this archive available to its members in the future.
This article is an English translation of an original Japanese article, translated by the Mogura VR editorial team.
