E-learning in didactic workshops. The virtual atelier system ‘T-Labs’: storage, conceptual metatagging and sharing of the architectural design knowledge

In the Faculty of Architecture of the University IUAV of Venice, the e-learning experimentation in architectural design teaching started in 1999. Since then, our research group developed a virtual atelier system based on prototypes called “TDraw” (Spigai et al. 2003) and “WITarch” (Spigai et al. 2004): informatics tools for the on-line revision and storage of students’ design tasks. The didactic experimentation provided important information about the mechanisms of learning process and knowledge transmission in the didactic atelier: this kind of teaching methodology produce a large amount of notions, a rich information flux that can be factored in single learning objects and raised to a collective knowledge. At present, our research group is improving and combining the previous instruments in a single tool: the new “T-Labs” system (Spigai et al. 2006); through this system, starting from the interrogatives that arise during the teacher-student relationship, each student can found possible design solutions, which would be exemplified by the students’ design tasks annotated and commented by the teacher and stored in the system. The experience matured in these years acts an important role in the new MACE project; in fact, the analysis and the observation of the atelier activity brought about the definition and the validation of a series of conceptual categories through which is possible to map the architectural design generative process and the whole architectural design subject.