Visual Expressiveness in Educative Architectural Animations

Consider the current graphic capabilities of multimedia authoring tools. Many information technologies have been exploited to the fullest in the gaming and advertising industries. As far as educational materials produced to explain outstanding architectural and many heritage works, most publications still rely on print media. While much digital information has been propagated online through the Internet (and a few CD-ROM formats could also be found) the techniques of delivery have yet to take advantage of potential technologies, preferring only to digitally replicate and hyperlink the structure and content found in their printed cousins. The reason for this slow adoption is not clear and paradoxical since our society places abundant emphasis and stresses the importance of education over games. However, it seems that the industry and, more importantly, the architecture discipline themselves do not appear to promote architectural visualisations as a significant contributor to the education and learning process. Therefore, educative architectural information visualisation may have to set itself apart, especially to generate growth and interest in this area. This paper does not deal with the technical aspects of visualisation creation processes but proposes to emphasise architectural visualisations - animations, in particular - as a heightened form of art that could be approached with grammatical lens more than merely a technical exercise that aims to serve an outcome or an industry as they are often perceived now. Digital architectural visualisations and their delivery techniques can be expanded much more as an artistic (architectural) expression like architectural writings are to authors, games to game designers. Although differences could be identified, there are numerous lessons that can be drawn from other forms of art to propel architectural visualisations to a new level beyond those seen in real-estate websites, architectural practices and most studentsi works in reputed educational institutions. Architectural information is peculiar to each building. In order to explicate the essences of architectural works (i.e. the vocabularies, designeris intents, etc), in all fairness, their presentations cannot be generically produced and uniformly adapted. What one technique and approach could successfully achieve in explaining one building cannot exactly be re-applied to another building with the same expected results. Forms, scales, circulation paths, lighting assignments, designeris intents, other information (and types) to be delivered differ from one building to another. As such, executions are also wide open to be explored to not only address the practical issues but also to express the intentions of the author/s or director/s to strengthen the architectural narratives. This paper highlights and illustrates by examples, specifically in architectural flythroughs/animations, considerations that need to be addressed in order that the results would serve as an artistic/architectural expression with a degree of educative substance