Designing Virtual Worlds as Architecture Tp 044

Designing virtual worlds as architecture considers the form and function of spatial virtual environments as an alternative kind of architectural design. This perspective can lead to a new way to organize and explore the Internet as a place. In this paper, we refer to this type of online environment as virtual architecture. Traditionally, virtual architecture refers to the 3D visual simulation of physical architecture. This purpose of virtual architecture has been widely recognised and applied to architectural practice. Virtual architecture as an online functional place (Maher et al, 2000) still struggles at the research level due to the lack of understanding of the materials for designing virtual architecture and the lack of appropriate design platforms or tools. The design of virtual worlds such as virtual design studios (Maher and Simoff, 1999), virtual offices (Maher et al, 1999) and virtual meeting environments provide a basis for studying design materials for virtual architecture. These designs distinguish themselves as functional virtual places that provide a sense of place and a sense of awareness of others. Through these designs, we can generalise the effect of software as the design materials of virtual architecture. This paper explores the nature of these new design materials, evaluates the current status of various design platforms or tools and considers the future development of virtual architecture as a functional place. Virtual architecture (VA) is an online place designed using the metaphor of physical architecture. As the focus in this paper, firstly virtual architecture is a functional place for housing online activities and carrying electronic information. Most commonly these are achieved through computer programming languages, which can be called functional core (FC). Virtual architecture inhabits in the digital domain and is presented to people as certain kinds of digital media, which can be called visual shell (VS). Similar to physical architecture, virtual architecture consists of different building elements. In an object-oriented environment, each of these elements is represented as an object. They can be generalised as design materials (DM). Hence each object of these design materials should also have its sub functional core and sub visual shell as parts of the functional core and visual shell of virtual architecture. These ideas are illustrated in Figure 1.