The explosive growth of the internet has brought about entirely new design perspectives for the architect - "architecture is now invisible, and organising information is referred to as architecture” [William Gibson). In the net we are navigators, ‘netizens`, and are able to move and act in simulated cities and ‘soft sites`, communicating in a virtual urban realm. How do architects take on the task of designing virtual spaces and interfaces, and what effect do these realms and typologies have on perceptions of the built environment? What are the points of contact between the real and virtual sphere, and how can architects create spheres of action within web spaces which in turn influence action in the city space?

'When bricks become pixels, the tectonics of architecture become informational.'
(Marcus Novak)

Ortlos was officially founded in 1998 as a way of working nomadically. The goal of ‘the office that never sleeps` is to generate advanced tools for architectural and urban design, a sort of platform, a creative pool, supported with information and databases organised via trans-local and networked environments. The ideal use of the web for ortlos - literally, ‘placeless` - is as a matrix, an infinite, always changing field of the creative contributions of its builders.

www.ortlos.com

Francois Roche is member of the architects R&Sie.D/B:L, based in Paris, and of new-territories, a practise exploring the architectural potentials of the virtual realm: ‘The real: a displacement of geographies, the virtual: a geography of displacement.` Projects include ‘Organic`, a virtual scenography for the Public Library of Information, eaubourg, ‘Declic` - an exhibition examining E-spaces, ‘Noledge`, Zürich - a public space in 3D, like a new browser.

Stadt.Studied Architecture at the RWTH in Aachen and at the AA in London, and founded Königs Architekten in Cologne together with Ilse Maria Königs. Divercity - open-source based urban planning - is a project developed in collaboration with Christoph Heinemann and Christoph Schmidt from ifau Berlin, and applies the concept of open source software to the development of a method for process-based and constantly updated urban planning

Marten Suhr is founder and spokesman for c-base e.V. As ‘urbitect`, he worked on a 3D reconstruction of the c-base space station, and on the linking of the c-base graphic user interface with the topographical reality of Berlin`s cityscape. c-base`s interface design acts as a place-maker for the space station, purported to lie underneath Berlin-Mitte. An interplay of urban fact and architectural fiction. Bettina Vismann presented Phase 2 of the c-base reconstruction project

www.c-base.org

Osa designs the "virtual space" as a possibility of the "real space", for it to be differently perceived and interpreted. Such a "virtual space" and its design give the possibility of changing imperfect "real spaces" - which cannot be changed in reality - in the interpretation of the user. The user does not perceive them any longer as imperfect, but contrary to that: their hidden potentials move into the forground.

www.osa-online.de