Architectural Design In The Digital Means Of Virtual Reality Technology

Digital technology is the leading technology in 21st century; it has already penetrated into all fields, and promotes the development of many disciplines. Virtual reality as a method to simulate real environment and objects has appeared for a very long time. In recent decades, it always acts with digital technology and its use has been widespread.Traditional architectural design is from 2d to 3d, namely, from draft to model or construction. Drafts or sketches based on two-dimensional medium are concise and applied, but when we try to transform them into three-dimensional, it's always not visual enough. It will make some deviations. New design thoughts usually come to an untimely end, because it's hard to express accurate form on 2d medium, besides, defects are always concealed. Importing digital method and virtual reality technology into architectural design can give architect chances to design directly on 3d forms and it avoids many mistakes and repetitious labors. Architect can create unique and poetic structures easily by using digital method and virtual reality technology. Virtual reality systems can also help us to feel and analyze the inner space and peripheral environment of design project visually and exactly.Digital method and virtual reality technology are not merely tracer or way of expressing effects; their greater significance is severing for the process rather than for the result. Today, there are many mature examples of using digital method and virtual reality technology, and I choose some projects of them to expatiate and analyze in this dissertation. I have used some ways from the analysis to try designing experimentally, and in these design projects I used Pi series and Chemical periodic table as the basic form rules. Finally I have gained some experience in these experimental design projects. In the design teaching, I encouraged students to use digital method and virtual reality technology instead of traditional draft and sketch model. The students enhanced their three-dimensional sense in the very short time by creating and researching 3d spaces visually in computer, and their final models in the course were greatly beyond the former same grade's works.Digital method and virtual reality technology emphasize the artistry of architecture. And if we purify the artistry of architecture, it will be space art. But in the past absolute space art had no condition to exist. Now digital method and virtual reality technology can help us to create space art in computer. So I mention the digital space art as a new researching direction and preliminarily expatiate this art category.In summary, digital method and virtual reality technology are very important and meaningful to architectural design. They have not only made design methods to be promoted and innovated but also engendered a new architectural based art category.