In 1987, A. Scott Howe received a Bachelor of University Degree at the University of Utah and in 1989 a Master of Architecture Degree at the University of Utah Graduate School of Architecture. His studies included one year of research at Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan. He had various exhibitions in Japan and the U.S.A. and received several awards including the second place for outstanding design of Tokyo International Forum. Currently he is engaged in computer-aided design research.

An architect is always concerned with two worlds: the real (physical) world and the world of imagination (virtual). A real building is created in the physical world only after it has come to a virtual existence. An architect's purpose and calling is to give substance to virtual creations that exist only within the realm of his mind.

Traditionally, the nature of the object must be conveyed to others who don't have direct access to the architect's mind in order to cause it to be created in the physical world. This communication was accomplished by drawings which consisted of many layers of two-dimensional slices of information, or painstakingly calculated graphic perspectives of the three-dimensional virtual creation.

Times have changed. We can now manipulate freely and almost directly in a virtual universe exterior to our minds. We can define the laws of the virtual universe any way we choose, whether to match those of nature or of some make-believe universe of our imagination. When all the laws or parameters are defined, all that is left to do is submit it in batch and allow the virtual universe to behave as it may while we produce virtual videos (animations) and photographs (CG).

"Dynamic Intelligent Building: Atrium" image was rendered from an extremely complex model of a virtual building. The virtual building under construction at times proceeded from the ground up as in the physical universe, but more often than not from some convenient point in space. The model consists of many virtual solids ("materials") and hierarchical data structures in both natural and symmetrically duplicated spacial positions. Raytracing, reflection, refraction, lighting and mapping parameters were defined to match our physical universe to allow us to photograph the space in cross-section before it is built or even put on paper. The escalators, super-truss bridgeways and overhead space-truss structures are quite accurate in their rendered, ray-traced solid and hierarchical data structure state.

Technical Background

HW: IBM 5080 Workstation, IBM 3090
SW: Catia, Reals