In Romania, both education and architectural research feel the acute lack of state-of-the-art technology.

By modernisation, a Hi-Tech Learning Center, we aim to bring the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, to a competitive European level from all perspectives: research, design and education. For this, we consider endowments adapted to the current needs of architecture: printers for digital manufacturing, equipment for different types of data capture, as well as a studio dedicated to virtual reality technology in architecture, in the emerging environment of mixed realities. The arrangement of the space will target the flexibility and modulation of the work areas, so that the Laboratory will be able to host the most diverse activities, from wide audience conferences to casting a movie sequence. In the long term, the Hi-Tech Learning Center will have the capacity to attract funding through research projects and partnerships with actors in the profile industries. It will thus support education and will promote its potential outside the walls of the institution, through the new graduates from Mincu.

For a successful and competitive academic environment, we need to develop practices such as digital manufacturing research, digitization of the environment and artifacts through 3D scanning, or concept visualization through mixed realities. The solution we offer is the endowment of the University with a Hi-Tech Learning Center to facilitate access to the main technologies used in design and arhitecture. The research possibilities offered by such a laboratory will attract collaborations with other university centers or with actors involved in the field of cutting-edge technologies and, hence, the chance of self-financing.

New developments of Hi-tech learning center for the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism will provide access to the latest tool in technology and more intuitive ways to explore and innovate. The hi-tech learning center, developed and implemented at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism by the Globalworth Foundation, is based on a mix of latest tools in technologies, combined so that they could meet the specific requirements of education and design.

The hi-tech learning center will be endowment with the following:

• Digital manufacturing: 3 FDM printers

• VR studio with green screen, media wall, cameras, and light sources, one headset for VR and another for AR, as well as a high-performance graphics station

• Videoconference system that allows profesors and students to get in touch with with other profesor and students

• 22 computers and educational software

• Date capture solution: photogrammetry system

Number of beneficiarier: 3,000 students and 250 teachers
Budget: 172,000 Euro.