Most of what we have been exploring with Virtual Cities initiative, starting with Virtual Dubuque, has been about how 3D city replicas can be used to understand cities in a deeply immersive way – rather than the abstract experience of Google Earth, or the photos from Street View, we wanted to make the virtual city experience more accessible, customizable, data-rich environments that convey a more holistic understanding of what it’s like to actually be in the city.

Let’s quibble over semantics, shall we? Take a look at these two pictures: Which one would you identify as architecture?

Check out this realtime virtual tour of Villa Tugenhdat, by famed architect Mies van der Rohe, build published to Flash with Unity3D.

While designing in a virtual world, with shadows looming below objects as you create and modify them, you instantly ‘feel’ their weight and visual impact in a way no other architectural technology or design method affords. When you finish modeling an idea, you can immediately test the design by walking through it with your avatar, [...]

This video shows French architecture students presenting virtual designs they developed during a week-long ‘intensive’ at Paris-Malaquais using the virtual world Second Life. The presentations were made during the ARCHI21 presentation at the VWBPE conference.