Subject: Press Release: Virtual Architect

From: Greg Orwig <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Jun 1996 15:17:02 GMT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FROM:  Greg Orwig
(206) 543-2580
<[email-masked]>
DATE:    June 14, 1996

Virtual architect at UW's HIT Lab pioneering design in cyberspace

	Today, many people browse the World Wide Web instead of visiting
real places. Yet, nobody would mistake viewing a web site for an actual
visit to the Louvre, the Library of Congress or the surface of the moon.
	Imagine a three-dimensional web that captures what is missed from
the physical world -- an immersive experience which is explored by moving
through space rather than clicking on underlined words. Architects at the
University of Washington are realizing that vision by developing virtual
spaces which make browsing the web as easy as taking a stroll.
	Dace Campbell, a virtual architect at the Human Interface
Technology Lab (HIT Lab) at the UW, is leading a renaissance to design
virtual spaces not meant to be built in the physical world.
	"I see this as a call to arms for architects," Campbell said.
"Anyone who has browsed the web is bewildered and overwhelmed at first
because its not laid out in the way were used to experiencing our
environment. And that confusion will be even more intense as we move into
three- dimensional web applications. Architecture -- whether it uses
bricks and mortar in the physical world or digital data on the Internet --
is the perfect metaphor to give meaning to a three-dimensional
environment."
	Campbell and his colleagues at the UW are taking their research to
the global design community, teaching a seminar on virtual architecture in
July at the Zenobio Institute in Venice Italy.
	For his Master of Architecture design thesis, Campbell developed a
virtual gallery that offers spectacular, three-dimensional tours of
virtual worlds created at the HIT Lab, a joint research unit of the
Washington Technology Center and the UW. Campbell's project examined
architectural principles that help people orient themselves in the
physical world and can also be applied in the virtual realm. A doorway,
for example, is universally understood in the physical world to be a
portal from one space to another and may be a more intuitive symbol for
links between virtual spaces than the underlined blue text now used on the
web.
	Some principles that govern physical architecture, such as
gravity, don't apply in virtual architecture. To convey this in his
gallery, Campbell oriented the rooms and displays in different directions
so visitors would understand there is no global "up" and "down" in
cyberspace. But the virtual realm has its own set of limitations -- hard
disk space and network bandwidth -- which control the amount of detail in
a design.
	"Information technology is changing society so that what is
physical or tangible isn't always as important as how data is exchanged,"
Campbell said. "Banks used to be large, stone structures that represented
a secure place to leave our money. Today, we realize our money is no
longer in a physical place. We may never even need to go to a bank. But we
do need to be able to access money as digital information, and it should
be as easy and as intuitive as navigating in the physical world."
	In 1994, the UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the
HIT Lab established the Community and Environmental Design and Simulation
(CEDeS) Laboratory as a center for research and teaching in the
application of virtual reality to architecture. Led by Campbell and Jim
Davidson, a lecturer in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning,
the CEDeS Lab has demonstrated the potential of digital media to
conceptualize and simulate design projects ranging from a proposed
downtown Seattle park to the renovation of the historic Arsenale naval
shipyard in Venice, Italy.
	The UW is one of only a handful of institutions nationwide with a
curriculum focusing on the leading-edge field of virtual architecture.
Currently, architects design by sketching with pencil and paper, then
developing the plans with computer-aided design (CAD)  programs, with the
option of producing three-dimensional virtual models of the plans.
However, software is being developed that would allow architects to design
a building from beginning to end while immersed in virtual reality.
	"Virtual reality can be an invaluable design tool by allowing
architects to immerse themselves in a virtual model of a structure before
it is built; there's a lot you simply cant get from a two-dimensional
picture," explained Campbell. "But simulation of physical structures is
only the beginning. As we become a more digital society, were doing more
of our banking, shopping and working electronically -- in digital, or
virtual, environments rather than physical banks, malls and offices.
Architecture is the key to making the virtual world as easy to understand
and navigate in as the physical world."

###

For more information, contact Campbell at (206) 616-1444,
[email-masked], or see his web site at
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/people/dace/portfoli/thesis; or
contact Alden Jones at (206) 543-7994, [email-masked]

 ******************************************
 Greg Orwig
 Engineering News Writer

 University of Washington
 Office of News and Information, Box 351207
 Gerberding Hall, Room B-54
 Seattle, WA 98195

 206-543-2580 (phone)
 206-685-0658 (fax)
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