Digital Thinking

The EuropIA Conferences are organized as a cross-platform for the study and analysis of the application of the information, communication and computer technologies to architecture, archaeology, building engineering, civil engineering, urban design and policy analysis. What makes this conference unique is the interaction of different disciplines regarding their approach, methods and techniques for the application of advanced technologies. Specifics of disciplines are not the subject of the conference but serve as cases. Cross-platform discussions and interactions help to enhance scope of these technologies beyond their existing application limits. Furthermore, we seek a discussion of terms and conditions for introducing new tools (offered by the latest technology developments) and new strategies (required by the inevitable changes of the professional and educational working environments of architecture, archaeology, building engineering, civil engineering, urban design and policy analysis).
New digital cultures bring inevitable changes to our world and to the techniques, research methods and practices of design. The computer technology transforms slowly but surely the professions of environmental planning, architecture, archaeology and design. In recent years, we witness the emergence of digital methods using computer not only for facilitating technical tasks, but also to analyse project's performance or amplify the creative thinking of designers. Educating the future professionals has become a real challenge due to the clash between fast developing technology and slower evolving new design thinking and values redefinition. Confronting multi-disciplinary theoretical, teaching and practice experiences at the EuropIA11, will help finding the ways to the future of design.
Application of advanced technologies in digital thinking is the main goal of this conference. The papers selected by the scientific committees report on different ways of using and adapting the newest technologies so as to enable researchers and users to find new ways of developing digital thinking. Achieving this goal requires high level of experimental analysis approaches built upon a synthesis of multidisciplinary know-how and knowledge. EuropIA 11 shows that dealing with digital thinking concept requires the involvement of various disciplines: Architecture, Industrial Design, Art, History of Art, Archaeological Study, Building Construction, Sustainable Design, Urban Planning, Civil Engineering, etc... Although all these disciplines have not been represented directly, they are omnipresent in several papers and often in the round-table discussions of the conference.

Contributions to the Conference have addressed one of the following domains: theory (covering philosophy and methodologies), application (scenarios, case studies and tools) or education (learning and teaching). We divided up the papers appearing in this book by topic, namely: Architecture, Heritage and archaeology, Design Education, Art and Design, Design support Environments and Collaborative Design. It is worth mentioning that the multidisciplinary contributions also include the following topics: Building and Construction Robotics, Design Knowledge Representations, Design Methods Process and Creativity, Digital Fabrication and Prototyping, Generative Systems as also Virtual and Augmented Reality.