Within contemporary digital environments, there are increasing opportunities to explore and evaluate design proposals which integrate both architectural and landscape aspects. The production of integrated design solutions exploring buildings and their surrounding context is now possible through the design development of shared 3-D and 4-D virtual environments, in which buildings no longer float in space.

The scope of landscape design has expanded through the application of techniques such as GIS allowing interpretations that include social, economic and environmental dimensions. In architecture, for example, object-oriented CAD environments now make it feasible to integrate conventional modelling techniques with analytical evaluations such as energy calculations and lighting simulations. These were all ambitions of architects and landscape designers in the 70s when computer power restricted the successful implementation of these ideas. Instead, the commercial trend at that time moved towards isolated specialist design tools in particular areas. Prior to recent innovations in computing, the closely related disciplines of architecture and landscape have been separated through the unnecessary development, in our view, of their own symbolic representations, and the subsequent computer applications. This has led to an unnatural separation between what were once closely related disciplines.

Significant increases in the performance of computers are now making it possible to move on from symbolic representations towards more contextual and meaningful representations. For example, the application of realistic materials textures to CAD-generated building models can then be linked to energy calculations using the chosen materials. It is now possible for a tree to look like a tree, to have leaves and even to be botanicaly identifiable. The building and landscape can be rendered from a common database of digital samples taken from the real world. The complete model may be viewed in a more meaningful way either through stills or animation, or better still, through a total simulation of the lifecycle of the design proposal. The model may also be used to explore environmental/energy considerations and changes in the balance between the building and its context most immediately through the growth simulation of vegetation but also as part of a larger planning model.

The Internet has a key role to play in facilitating this emerging collaborative design process. Design professionals are now able via the net to work on a shared model and to explore and test designs through the development of VRML, JAVA, whiteboarding and video conferencing. The end product may potentially be something that can be more easily viewed by the client/user. The ideas presented in this paper form the basis for the development of a dual course in landscape and architecture. This will create new teaching opportunities for exploring the design of buildings and sites through the shared development of a common computer model.

This paper presents the results of an intense design workshop that looks, probes, and builds at the very interface that is provoking the cultural and professional shifts. Media space is presented and used as an interpretive playground for design experimentation in which the poetics of representation (and not its technicalities) are the driving force to generate architectural ideas. The work discussed was originally developed as a starting exercise for a digital design course. The exercise was later conducted as a workshop at two schools of architecture by different faculty working in collaboration with it's inventor.

The workshop is an effective sketch problem that gives students an immediate start into a non-traditional, hands-on, and integrated use of contemporary media in the design process. In doing so, it establishes a procedural foundation for a design studio dealing with digital media.

Such a problem, in standard form, presents an objective function Z=f(x), of n variables x, to be minimized and a system of linear equations and/or inequalities, on the same variables, which represent the constraints and which define an admissible area for the solution.

The architectural organism is modelled as an assembly of parallelepiped shaped space entities or units, provided with a certain number of "holes" that permit functional corresponding connection. The pursued intent being optimal assembly.

The model, in its mathematical form, fits a standard Non-Linear M.P. (N.L.P.) problem, since the objective function Z is non-linear and the constraints are represented by inequalities. In its graphic form it reproduces an image of all the space units constituting the organism; moreover it is able to represent these units, in their logical and physical individuality, and their mutual relationship, as well as the ones with the external environment.