Abstract:

In this paper, we introduce our new Minor Media Studies at the Faculty of Architecture.
The Department of Media Studies of the Faculty of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands offers education in the different communication and visualization media. It studies as well the role these media play during the entire design process.
When designing and transferring the design information, three-dimensional representations are normally essential. These representations facilitate the designer’s ‘conversation with oneself’ and with the other different participants in the design process.

The Minor Media Studies is all about communication, about the different information transfer methods and over visualization and presentation techniques.
Students gain insight into the opportunities and limitations of the various techniques and they become in consequence increasingly able to explore, develop and communicate their ideas in a better way.
The upcoming designer takes advantage of the various available media to record different moments within the whole design process. These media, analogue and digital, help accordingly to develop, investigate, evaluate, communicate and present her or his ideas.
In particular, images and models, as carriers of the simulation, give the designer the required feedback and are indispensable to explore, discuss and present designs.

Our department encourages students also to explore and combine all kind of media: computer modelling and rendering, freehand drawing and rendering, scale models, digital imaging, photography, video film and multimedia, internet based, presentations. In addition training in oral and textual presentations is being offered as well.
Even though the developments in computer aided imaging are proceeding rapidly, physical models and free hand drawn images, with often a fairly looser character, have often a very suggestive effect and are frequently given a high valuation.
On the other hand, the notion of what new media precisely are is continuously changing: the developments around the internet and internet based applications and around communication or networking (gsm, sms and wireless internet) represent a significant enlargement of the sum of tools our students can make use of.

In such an enormously mediated environment, these new tools offer designers new ways of expression and interaction. In combination with other media like film, imaging, text and sound, they make richer ways of expression possible and offer designers, at the same time, attractive possibilities to investigate and express their ideas.
The new Minor Media Studies pays attention, subsequently, to the combination of all these, either ‘traditional’ or newer, media techniques and communication tools and to the enlarged possibilities they offer to express emotions and ideas. It encourages the designer to visualize, describe and compose spaces in many diverse and new ways. The significance of this all can hardly be imagined.

Keywords:

curriculum development, higher and further education, new trends and experiences, animation and.