The means by which architects, planners, and builders communicate—with clients, with each other, with government agencies, and with the public—are changing. For the first time in history, design professionals have a powerful, interactive, multimedia communication channel: the Internet. Direct, two-way communication of visual and spatial ideas with clients, building users, public officials, and ordinary citizens is now possible. Moreover, hypertext gives designers the ability to make powerful connections between isolated pieces of information, supporting collaborative design and group decision making.

Designers have unique communication requirements. Most of our work is described using graphical two- and three-dimensional media. These forms of communication—plan, section, and elevation—are optimized for building three-dimensional buildings and spaces using two-dimensional documentation, but they are largely ineffective for communicating with ordinary people. Three-dimensional models are better, but their physical limitations make them useful mainly in small group situations, not as mass media. In a connected society, one in which stakeholders are demanding more participation than ever in planning and design, the Internet is giving everyone in the building enterprise a chance to communicate more effectively to an expanded audience.

The on-line Geographical Information System (GIS) for Turin, Italy

Two broad trends in communication, audiovisual media and networked computing, are converging at the beginning of this new century. During the twentieth century, movies and television became the main venues for cultural expression in Western society, surpassing literature and live performance. People began to receive more of their information and entertainment from screens and less from paper. No one doubted the power of these media to persuade and inform, but access to audiovisual media production was limited and expensive; one needed a movie studio or a broadcast license. An architect may have realized the immense potential of multimedia to simulate physical space, for example, but had little opportunity to use it. Besides, architects needed to communicate with only a few people at a time, the client mainly; certainly not neighbors, building users, faculty committees, or politicians.

The convergence of audiovisual media with the Internet makes powerful communication tools far more accessible, just at a time when architects, planners, and builders find they need to communicate with a more diverse audience than ever before. The media convergence is most developed on the World Wide Web, which integrates text, images, video, and sound into an interactive global network that is cheap, easy to use, and almost universally available. It is an excellent time for design professionals to acquaint themselves with new means of communicating.