The development of information and communication technologies offers architects new tools for design as well as new areas of architectural practice. What is more decisive is the change in mentality, in the way space is conceived and in the design procedure itself.The course offers:

• The basic design principles of interactive multimedia works (off-line products and on-line on the Internet)
• an approach to the new space concepts in the digital environment and to the codification of interactive communication.
• The study of human-computer interface contributes to the understanding of the major role of the computer screen as a point of convergence of different representational forms and the emergence of new ones proper to the digital culture.

The course’s content focuses on three major axes:

• Analysis of the different levels of screen space  as a communication environment (interface).
• Study of the new navigation codification, based on interactivity (gesture, selection, metaphor).
• The employment of the notion of program in both space and data organization.

The students are asked to create interactive multimedia projects of digital or hybrid space representations (autonomous or web applications). [Official Journal of the European Union, L 255/47, Architectural Education, points 1,2,3,5,6]

Beckman John (ed), The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, Princeton Architectural Press 1998

Chapman, N., Chapman, J.: 2004, Digital multimedia, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex.

Cotton Bob, Oliver Richard, Understanding Hypermedia 2000, Revised edition, Phaidon Press, 1997

Leroi-Gourhan, A.: 1993, Gesture and Speech, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, french edition: Leroi-Gourhan, A: 1964, Le geste et la parole,

Laurel, B. (ed): 1990, The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, Addison-Wesley, Boston

Laurel, B.: 1993, Computers as Theatre, Addison-Wesley, Boston

Manovich, L.: 2001, The Language of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass

Luppa, Nick, Designing Interactive Digital Media, Focal Press, 1998

Picon, A.: 2003, Architecture, science, technology and the virtual realm,in A. Picon, A. Ponte (eds.), Architecture and the Sciences Exchanging metaphors, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 292-313.

Tschumi, B.: 1996, Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass

interactive multimedia, interface design, hypermedia and hyperlink design, inetactive design, interactive navigation, digital narration