INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

Abstract

The advance and complexity of technology has changed architectural practice. The professional's role is not the master-builder anymore. He is now expected to be an integrator. More than ever, he must acquire communication and team-working skills, and develop a lifelong learning tradition. Architecture schools, under the allegation of failing to meet the challenges of the new professionalism, anxiously implemented technology in their curricula. As a result, five trends of technology usage in architectural education emerged, namely: design methods, CAD visualisation, paperless architecture, information architecture, and the virtual design studio (VDS). The VDS, the last and the trendiest technological paradigm in academia, has many potentials and limitations. The research goal is to explore this trend and examine its effect on the educational design studio. The VDS promotes the synchronised development of students' team-working and interpersonal abilities, and their technical skills. Its implementation is practical and affordable in Egyptian schools. However, many concerns about the use of technology in education are raised, especially its effect on students' social habits, the reliability of their sources of information and their prospect role in professional life. Unfortunately, the literature on the VDS does not meet these issues. To attain this point, the research set the following objectives. Firstly, it understands the changing architectural professionalism and its education. Also, it explores the use of information technology (IT) in both practice and education. Then, it studies the VDS as a trend of IT usage in academia. Finally, the research discusses the practicality of the operation of a VDS in Egyptian design studios and offers a guiding technical framework for implementation. The research is divided into seven chapters, of which Chapter One is the introduction.