3D Visualization in Design Education

It has been said that “The beginning of architecture is empty space.” (Mitchell 1990) This statement typifies a design education philosophy in which the concepts of space and form are separated and defined respectively as the negative and positive of the physical world, a world where solid objects exist and void-the mere absence of substance-is a surrounding atmospheric emptiness. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, there has been an alternative concept of space as a continuum: that there is a continuously modified surface between the pressures of form and space in which the shape of the space in our lungs is directly connected to the shape of the space within which we exist. (Porter 1979). The nature of the task of representing architecture alters to reflect the state of architectural understanding at each period of time. The construction of architectural space and form represents a fundamental achievement of humans in their environment and has always involved effort and materials requiring careful planning, preparation, and forethought. In architecture there is a necessary conversion to that which is habitable, experiential, and functional from an abstraction in an entirely different medium. It is often an imperfect procedure that centers on the translation rather than the actual design. Design of the built environment is an art of distinctions within the continuum of space, for example: between solid and void, interior and exterior, light and dark, or warm and cold. It is concerned with the physical organization and articulation of space. The amount and shape of the void contained and generated by the building create the fabric and substance of the built environment. Architecture as a design discipline, therefore, can be considered as a creative expression of the coexistence of form and space on a human scale. As Frank Ching writes in Architecture: Form, Space, and Order, “These elements of form and space are the critical means of architecture. While the utilitarian concerns of function and use can be relatively short lived, and symbolic interpretations can vary from age to age, these primary elements of form and space comprise timeless and fundamental vocabulary of the architectural designer.” (1979