`VR-chitecture´-a new discipline

`VR-chitecture´-or virtual architecture, is the art/discipline of designing buildings that are never meant to be built. In traditional architectures such buildings are known as `projects´: designs that the architect would like to realise but for which there is no client, budget or sufficiently advanced technology. Virtual buildings are superficially similar in that they, too, never reach the point of going on site, remaining on the computer screen. The crucial difference is that the virtual building is not merely a representation of an object-to-be, but the object itself. It is not built in bricks and mortar because there is no need: it serves its purpose better in its non-material form. An example of such a `building´ is the virtual British Library-an online, interactive 3D environment available at any given time to thousands of users on the screens of their personal computers, via digital telephone lines, updated constantly and linked to similar databases at home and abroad. Structured like traditional and familiar libraries in a spatial setting of shelves and volumes set out according to subject and alphabetical order, books, journals and even videos and music are connected to respective to 3D icons. Televirtual shopping and the televirtual office are variants of the virtual library and are also discussed