SPATIAL REPRESENTATION OF DESIGN THINKING IN VIRTUAL SPACE

“Space” has long been an important concept in architecture; and architectural spaces and forms have been continuously evolved due to the appearance of new concepts of space. Since the invention of Internet, new spaces have been created through the computer. To understand how human beings in the digital age experience these new virtual spaces, and to discover the implications of the possible new concepts of space into the physical architectural world, this paper discusses the nature of virtual spaces by examining the verbal and visual elements involved in the creation of a sense of virtual spaces. All the verbal and visual elements of virtual spaces discovered through our experiments and interviews are presented. It is found that the three core elements of both verbally and visually constructed virtual spaces are: movements, interactions, and acoustic effects. In addition, a comparison between verbally and visually constructed spaces, and between physical and virtual spaces are explored. Finally, further studies related to the role of digital media in the construction of a sense of space are suggested at the end of this paper.