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Mario Matthys

  • category
    junior researcher
  • research group
    Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research
  • keywords

Mario Matthys is an architect and spatial planner (Sint-Lucas Gent) with 35 years of experience in his capacity as an urban designer and (urban) innovator in the city of Ghent. He was involved in housing and mobility planning and specialized in city renewal projects, and he organized several architectural competitions.

He was part-time city-architect for public safety issues related to buildings. In combination with his education in informatics (VUB), he launched CAD and GIS in the city of Ghent during the 80’s. In the 90’s he worked as a VR/AR/3D pioneer in a municipal context.
In his function of secretary of 2 professional associations (VFP: Flemish association of Urban planners) and BVS (Belgian association of urbanists) he was co-promotor of the merger of both into VRP (Flemish Association of Spatial Planning). As a chairman of the Flemish GIS association FLAGIS, he was a prominent GIS promotor in Flanders. He was part-time teacher in the Master of Urban and Spatial Planning at the university college of Sciences and Arts in Ghent and Brussels, and acted as a member of many juries. He was also chairman of the GIS-team of VVSG. 
During the last 10 years, he resumed his role as a VR/AR and 3D coordinator of Ghent (European ERDF-project innovation 2009-2014). The innovation results were vulgarized in hundreds of lectures in Belgium and abroad. Thousands of citizens and researchers all over the world obtained demos in the 3D-C.A.V.E. and VR/AR technology. This resulted in 10 awards/nomination on the border of innovation and cocreation.
His expertise incorporates the holistic approach of a dynamic “parallel virtual universe” in which the LOD (Level of Detail) is combined with animation in a time-space model, taking shape as a multi-dimensional time-machine using game development. His goal is to create a multi-disciplinary educational, designing, planning, evaluation and interactive communication instrument. His field of expertise comprises the complete scope of 3D-scanning, over 3D-modeling, 3D-GIS data structures, game development software, BIM, 3D-printing and VR/AR/MR/ER, 4D. The combination of co-creation and Multi-D innovation is hereby his passion and asset.
As a “special PhD fellowship” of FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) he will finish in 2022 a JointPhD “Science Geography Ugent and Interdisciplinary Urban Studies VUB”, and so his research is also integrated in Cosmopolis.