The Virtual Architectural Studio – An Experiment of Online Cooperation

This paper raises the question of the stages of assimilation of the new information and communication technology in the field of architectural education from its insertion as a visual support and tool in the designing process to the use of the virtual medium as a mediator off the processes of interdisciplinary and intercultural cooperation irrespective of the geographic area and the time zone differences. The architectural studio with its real physical space and pedagogic method is in the middle of architectural education. The development of the 2D and 3D designing programs combined with the image and data communication technologies enables the virtual dimension of the experience of the architectural studio. As an alternative to the traditional studio, coming to improve the formal instruction and not to replace it, the students in different locations may ‘meet’ in the timeless and bodiless virtual space to solve the same designing problem. Commentaries and criticism may be brought in the network, by e-mail or chat, and the final projects may be submitted to judgment without the actual presence in a physical space of the judgment board. The architecture virtual studio has the potential of supporting cooperation in the detriment of competition, of diversifying the student’s experiences of to redistribute the intellectual resources of architectural education beyond the geographical borders and socio-economic division. The challenge consists in foretelling whether the architectural studio will alienate the students from a sense of space or whether it will be the mediation tool between the communication media and the physical space.