Virtual Environments & Architectural Backups is a research course combining architectural preservation theory with technology research. The course is meant to provide a critical and technical framework in which to address topics of architectural preservation and virtuality within the context of emerging technology and planetary-scale computational systems. Students will learn a series of tools allowing them to complete the following operations:

1. Digitally copy architecture to virtual space through 3d scanning, surveying and modelling.
2. Transfer virtual environments to physical exhibition space through augmented reality (AR).

By learning and implementing the above exercises, students will simultaneously be asked to complete design exercises related the themes of the course abstract. More specifically, students will be asked to copy pieces of historically significant and / or preserved architecture.

Furthermore, they will be asked to find uses for implementing their historically replicated virtual spaces in physical, public space environments at full scale through exhibition. In this manner, the students will be confronted with ethical and programmatic questions related to copying and preserving architecture and augmenting new program onto existing space.

Students will be asked to provide a critical thematic argument for their design decisions and to provide user feedback based on their observations and participation from the public. Studentswill simultaneously be asked to demonstrate their technical capabilities by providing the class with their submissions to a common architectural library of scanned architectural components to be published on the internet for free.