No More Fear or Doubt: Electronic Architecture in Architectural Education

Operating electronic and Internet worked tools for Architectural education is an important, and merely a prerequisite step toward creating powerful tele-collabortion and tele-research in our Architectural studios. The design studio, as physical place and pedagogical method, is the core of architectural education. The Carnegie Endowment report on architectural education, published in 1996, identified a comparably central role for studios in schools today. Advances in CAD and visualization, combined with technologies to communicate images, data, and “livei action, now enable virtual dimensions of studio experience. Students no longer need to gather at the same time and place to tackle the same design problem. Critics can comment over the network or by e-mail, and distinguished jurors can make virtual visits without being in the same room as the pin-up “ if there is a pin-up (or a room). Virtual design studios (VDS) have the potential to support collaboration over competition, diversify student experiences, and redistribute the intellectual resources of architectural education across geographic and socioeconomic divisions. The challenge is to predict whether VDS will isolate students from a sense of place and materiality, or if it will provide future architects the tools to reconcile communication environments and physical space