When the digital era entered in architecture, lot of people didn’t recognize the importance of this fact. Especially old teachers would complain about the lack of humanity of the new instrument; some understood that would have been a good way to improve productivity, but almost only students understood the power of the new tool. In fact is only now; that the students generation has become the new generation of professionals and professors, that the digital architecture has become more mature and it is the object of experimentation by universities and professionals. We can see in different field of architecture how the computer improved the architectural profession as well as the possibility to experiment. One on first things is the representation of a 3D model, that give the opportunity to bring the client inside the project even before it has been build, the chance of correcting and replicating drawings 10 or 20 times faster than it used to be, the 3D cartography, the GIS technology (geographic information system), the generative technology, the possibility to analyze un enormous amount of data and predict the performance of the building before it is built (anticipate the effect of the wind on the building envelope and indoor air flow, or the quantity of eat generated by the sun on a surface etc.)
But, in may opinion, what is the most interesting use of the digital technology in architecture: is when we use it on the architecture, when we build buildings that use the digital technology to improve their possibility, to give easier access to connectivity, to create new digital spaces that surround, interact, and compenetrate the physical space.
These spaces are growing in number and typology, inside these “hybrid” spaces are meeting new communities of people that are living their life all over around the world and that have different cultures and interests, from students to musicians, from soccer players to sexual addicted, from professor to rappers etc.
There is not much need to go far to understand the nature of those spaces, a phone call create a new space between the two people that are talking, a chat over the computer create a new space that may include a number o people, a blog create a space that can be joined by different people in different moment etc. There are communities that interact into a 3D world, like for Simcity, Second Life etc. All those are basic samples of possible virtual spaces that interacting with the physical space will create a Hybrid world. There are also offices, that may be located in different city or countries and that work in a virtual common space, where they are connected by “skype” to talk an see each other, that have a common server where they save the job they are doing etc. This is an example of a more complex hybrid space. 3D world like Second Life (SL), are also very interesting, because they are creating a new complex virtual-physical world. There are people today, working in real life that produce stuff to be sold in SL, as for example skins, or motorbike etc. and there are people producing houses in SL to show to their clients how they will look like in real life, etc. Those people are making enough money to live a decent “real” life; few months ago more than 200 people where involved on this kind of job. More: from second life your avatar can call somebody to a real phone, for example your may meet somebody in SL that can help you with your real job, so you want to contact your business partner to talk about the argument while you are still in SL and the avatar you met is still there, at this point from SL you can call form a public phone your partner in real life and make your avatar talking with him in front of the avatar you met. The fanny think is you could be very far away from each other or you may be so close that you wouldn’t need to call, but you can’t know that.
http://secondlife.com/
http://simcity.ea.com/
