ABSTRACT
The Paper describes the integration of a suite of interactive tutorials into a course in Construction and Structure at the University of Auckland. It discusses the appropriate use of such teaching devices within the wider educational framework of architecture schooling.
The incremental integration of computer use from that of a surrogate information-provider, then as a supplement to the main thread of curriculum flow, to becoming a powerful tool which is manipulated by the students themselves, is followed.
Most University teaching centres on lectures and library skills, and for Architecture this has traditionally included exercise in drawing classes, laboratories and site visits-the apparatus of practical problem solving. Throughout, because architecture is a matter of non-linear interaction, spatial relationships and subjective non-neutral expectations, its schooling requires the acquisition of further skills and concerns-those of the time based media—temporal, dynamic, and syntonic (to do with the unconscious knowledge or intuition).
This then privileges computers and the techniques of the moving image creator. The Paper will describe the designing of HyperSteel, and its implementation, concluding that as non-print media develop fast within architecture and engineering education, both to teach and to represent the built form, teachers should match this with pedagogical understanding.
