Abstract:

Many important architects have created designs which have never been built. Also, part of the oeuvre is frequently unknown to many people, cannot be visited or just has disappeared. In any case, it becomes often difficult to recreate and understand these works and the corresponding background or concepts they are based upon.
On the other hand, architects traditionally used to communicate their ideas principally by means of plans and sections. These drawings are often not enough to convey the plans clearly and correctly enough. Besides, this material does not appeal nowadays to many people.
New media and the internet offer us a wider range of possibilities to communicate and present this material. But particularly, it represents a new way to explore design.

Except for the designer’s ‘conversation with oneself’, three-dimensional representation is important when presenting design.
The Department of Media Studies at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands), offers her students, and encourages them also to combine, all the different available design visualisation media.
They explore traditional and new media such as freehand drawing, digital modelling and rendering, photography, video, and internet based multimedia.
All these media, and especially in combination, contribute to a better communication and understanding of designs. At the same time, we try to find out which role new media plays throughout the process of designing.

During the last few years and in collaboration with the Bonas Foundation, affiliated to the NAI (Netherlands Architecture Institute), students at our Department have been able to create multimedia presentations and publish internet pages dedicated to the oeuvre of many Dutch architects and directed to a wide public.
As a try-out for an upcoming exhibition, an elective exploring and presenting some particular aspects concerning the oeuvre of the Dutch architect G. Rietveld (1888-1964) is at the moment, being offered to our students.
Diverse aspects configure the base of these projects, directed to both the way new media can influence how we present existing material to others and the way we look at, and eventually better understand, ideas visualised by means of 'traditional' media.
At the same time, we experience that students, and a wide public, draw more attention to these oeuvres when presented through new media.
As an element of these multimedia presentations the students create three-dimensional models, render images and animations and make short films. The digital models facilitate a better exploration of the plans, increases remarkably the sense of scale and the understanding of the designs.
Together with the original documentation students become increasingly able to reveal different or yet new relationships within the images or between these images and textual pieces. Accordingly, these media tools can eventually make possible to achieve new visions on historical material.
Students can now explore and present essential aspects of the ideas and intentions of the designer usually not revealed by means of other media. All this digital material is attractive to young people and at the same time, through the Internet, is published worldwide and becomes available to a wider public.

Keywords:

higher and further education, new trends and experiences, animation and 3d.