An Experiment in Using Virtual Reality to Teach Compositional Principles to Beginning Students

This paper introduces an experiment in using educational toys as a means for teaching compositional principles to architectural students using: (1) a traditional model-based approach and (2) “BlocksWorld” a computer-based system that utilizes immersive virtual reality technologies. The paper discusses the general nature of the exercise and its objectives and illustrates some of the resulting student projects. Then it introduces an approach to implementing an interactive virtual design environment that is based on this exercise