The Virtual Embodied Experience: Virtual Reality as a Medium for Computing, Analysing, and Representing the Cityscape

The increasing availability of urban data has transformed how the built environment is analysed and designed, yet the tools used to represent and interpret that data remain largely abstract and symbolic. Virtual reality (VR) offers the possibility of engaging with spatial data immersively, but its role in architectural and urban research remains predominantly confined to visualisation and simulation. The extent to which VR supports embodied interaction with data, where users experience and interpret information through spatial presence and movement, remains underexplored. This article addresses this gap through a systematic literature review of Scopus and CumInCAD (Cumulative Index of Computer Aided Architectural Design), comparing interdisciplinary and architecture-specific research across three dominant themes: representation and analysis, simulation, and embodied interaction. The findings reveal a conceptually fragmented field: While computational research has advanced VR simulation significantly, embodied approaches remain weakly integrated with data-driven workflows. To address this divide, the article proposes virtual embodied experience (VEE), a framework that positions VR as a cognitive interface through which environmental data are navigated as a spatial condition rather than consulted as an abstract output. The implications of VEE are discussed in relation to emerging professional requirements established by the Architects Registration Board and the Royal Institute of British Architects around climate literacy, lifecycle thinking, and ecological design.