ITG Forum

designing architecture: concept sketching in the cave™

Joy Monice Malnar

Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, UIUC

11/1/2001

3rd Floor tower, 3269 Beckman

The architectural design process has throughout the ages begun with a conceptual idea sketched on a two-dimensional surface. But sketching on a 2-D surface provides a fundamental contradiction, for designs intended to be experienced in three dimensions are conceived with two-dimensional techniques. Professor Malnar and her architectural design studio are exploring ways to spatially conceive a building design by sketching and modeling three-dimensionally at close to full scale with direct manipulative applications in the immersive CAVE™ virtual reality environment. How valuable is a concept sketch? Well, Bill Gates paid $30 million for Leonardo da Vinci's notebook.

Professor Malnar is a licensed architect who has worked on both commercial and residential design at such firms as Sargent and Lundy, Whitaker Associates, and Skidmore Owings and Merrill. She is the co-author of the Interior Dimension: A Theoretical Approach to Enclosed Space and Sensory Design (to be released in Fall 2002). She has received two NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellowships to pursue research in the CAVE™.

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