Survey of Architectural-ICT in the Educational Curriculumns of Europe

Abstract

The paper documents the findings of the post-graduate study carried out among the 180 European schools of architecture in more than 30 countries during 2002-2003. The objective has been to describe the role of ""modern digital information technology"" and to give an understandable and measurable overview the current architectural education and its relation with ICT and CAAD. The study material has been collected with a web-survey, with questionnaires to eCAADe-conference participants in Helsinki 2001 and Warsaw 2002, and with direct email-contacts to schools’ key-persons. Computer-aided design has developed into architectural information and communication technology (ICT), to become the main tool of the majority. The general image of new media use in the architectural schools seems to be slightly too positive. The invisible or ”normal” ICT-use - writing, surfing, emailing - has a lot more volume than documented. The major hardware platform in european architecture schools is PC/Windows (90-95 %), Linux and Unix are used also commonly (25-35 %). Macintoshes are also used much more widely within architecture (50-55 %) than within the common computing platforms. MS/Office (90-95 %) and PhotoShop (85-90 %) are obviously also used widely in the architecture schools. Graphic tools PageMaker, QuarkXpress, Illustrator, Freehand are common tools for architecture students (30-50 %). AutoCAD is ”the marketing leader"" in architectural platforms (80-90 %) followed by ArchiCAD (60-65 %). MicroStation/Bentley has also a remarkable volume in the schools (35-40 %). 3DStudio is the most common 3D-modelling tool (80-85 %), followed by formZ (35-40 %). Slightly less volume but still remarkable (15-25 %) have Rhino, Maya, Alias, Lightscape and Radiance.