Search

Architectural-IT and Educational Curriculumns – A European Overview

Pentillä, Hannu

The paper summarizes the analysis of data on european architecture schools, collected in the eCAADe-conferences during the 1990s. Computer-Aided Design has developed into architectural information and communication technology (ICT), to become commonplace in architectural education. However, the general held views on new media use in the schools seems to be slightly optimistic. On the other hand, the invisible more common ICT use (writing, surfing, emailing) accounts for a lot more of the volume of activity than generally appreciated.

The major hardware platform in european architecture schools is PC/Windows (90–95%) with Linux and Unix commonly used in servers (25–35%). Macintoshes are also widely used (50–55%). MS Office (90–95%) and PhotoShop (85–90%), are used widely in the schools. The Graphic and DTP tools PageMaker, QuarkXpress, Illustrator, Freehand are also common (30–50%). AutoCAD is the market leader in CAD platforms (80–90%), followed by ArchiCAD. MicroStation/Bentley also has a significant presence in the schools (35–40%). 3DStudio is the most common 3D-modelling tool (80–85%), followed by formZ (35–40%). Less common (15–25%) are Rhino, Maya, Alias, Lightscape and Radiance.