Tracking Future Graphics Education through Virtual Dystopian Spaces

This paper aims at envisioning prospective fragments of future scenarios in the field of graphics education in architecture. The inspiration comes from the recent rapid evolution affecting the approach to digital representation in the Schools of Architecture. After a long «dormant» phase, the digital and the internet have shown a tremendous rise, not only on the academic channels but also in our everyday life. In addition, the appearance of Covid-19 worldwide has made them necessary supports for and virtual surrogates of plenty of actions traditionally happening face to face. Consequently, for about a year now, technology has been at the core of the massive communication strategies activated to mitigate the effects of social distancing. Showing in addition an interesting contrast: while on the one hand the real world seems to have been widely flanked by, or, sublimated into dystopic «virtual bubbles», on the other hand, just that virtual bubbles seem to tend to acquire a status of «real places» in a large part of our lives. Which in our opinion deserves our disciplinary attention, since that new pretentious real places are made of the same matter of representations in fact. Here languages become relevant. Then our research question is: may the mentioned dystopian visionary worlds generated by the digital be also of help, apart from their instant fascination, in envisioning fragments of the future operational scenarios waiting for us in architectural graphics education?