Connecting virtual Reality to Material Construction

摘要

New information, communication and production technologies, alongside new forces for international business cooperation, present the requirement for radical changes in design and implementation while at the same time providing the unique tools for architects to shape and command that change. By creatively employing the technical capabilities of new information and communications systems to restructure the design and construction process, the field of architecture and its educational structures may reassert their centrality and power in the economy of construction, imaginatively redefining society's ambitions for the built environment. A first step in this process is to reverse the marginalization of physical reality which occurs in most teaching about computers in architecture. Even in the computer age, architects and students must keep their hands dirty. Beginning in the fall of 1997, this school of architecture implemented a new computer course curriculum dedicated to establishing a clearly defined link between the tools of computer technology and the importance of their use in strengthening the role of architects in the design and realization of the physical environment. Through a redefinition of the two required computer courses and an alliance of the courses with a new design/build lecture program, the curriculum explores the relationship between virtual and material realities by providing design students with a direct experience of a simultaneously virtual and physical construction experience.