Anti-Models for Architectural Graphic Expression and UX Education

Introduction

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) allows to order and process the information related to the characteristics of a material object (Demel & Miller, 1984). In architecture CAD serves to build an analogous model of the building, for example (Newman & Sproull, 1979). Although it is true that in interactive design it may start with a folio and a pencil, this does not mean that the designer of the 21st century has to be a graduate in fine arts or an illustrator to carry out their tasks. One of the advantages of CAD is what prevents the need from working with the hand, that is, the architect or the civil engineer decides what things are like and the CAD shows how they are seen (Newman & Sproull, 1979). Currently there is a very wide variety of commercial programs or systems, which allows to draw lines and store them in bitmap files or vectorials. Starting from these lines and sketches it can be imported in another set of commercial programs with worldwide circulation (AutoCAD, DataCAD, TurboCAD, etc.) to turn them into 2D and/or 3D objects. In this work, the notion of object refers to a building or to the component thereof, for instance, a door, a window, a plant, etc. In other words, CAD takes care of the exclusive design tasks, such as technical drawing and its documentation. However, with the passing of time, some commercial products have included the animation to architectural CAD (Van Welbergen, et al. 2006). For instance, in the transit from the 20th to the 21st century, the 3D Studio Viz of Autodesk (www.autodesk.com) included the day light phenomena. Now although a CAD system, commercial or not, it may adopt a myriad algorithms of graphic computing which allows it to work in many different ways, there are some common elements, which all share and which have been adapted as rules: it is spatial, Cartesian and vectorial.

Traditionally, in Spain graphic illustration has been more aimed at the fine arts rather than at architecture. However, there are university contexts where the exception to the international academic rules is always a constant practice in some departments or members thereof. Now the exception to the academic rules doesn’t mean that we are talking of excellence. As a rule, the expression “transversal discipline” is fashionable in some pedagogic academic environments where allegedly the students attend master or educational excellence classes whether it is in situ that is, within the classroom, or virtually thanks to the new ICT (Information and Communication Technology).

Irrespective of whether the architectural CAD education is carried out inside the classroom or in e-learning, the new technologies play an important role for the practices, review of the main notions, the fostering of teamwork, etc. In our days, not even the last generation virtual agents aimed at education, with an excellent communicability level and a high realism in the gestural movements, voice and movement synchronism, etc. have been able to replace 100% the whole human team of professors to obtain a degree or a technical engineering, for instance (Cipolla-Ficarra, 2005). In other words, the new technologies must be considered as tools which facilitate the learning process. The problem arises when there is a mercantilist use (disguised or manifest publicity in each one of the social communication media) from the university educational environment.