Digital Imaging in Teaching Structures: A Rigorous Visual Approach

The paper outlines a project to incorporate digital images and the world wide web into the teaching of structural design for buildings, using an approach that is both highly visual and theoretically rigorous. A key objective of the project is to reach students how to understand a structure through visual critical analysis, applying hypotheses based on structural principles to explain phenomena and features visible in photographs of structures that are complete, under construction, or damaged. The project takes advantage of the special characteristics of digital images in conveying structural concepts—including the use of digital enhancement, annotation, and manipulation to clarify phenomena—and conceptually links them to physical and mathematical principles. In addition, the project uses the world wide web to make photographs available outside the classroom, enabling image-based homework assignments. The web is also used to collect and review input from students. The paper finds that, although they can be used independently, the applications of digital imaging and the applications of the web are particularly powerful in combination.