In 1979 Ugo la Pietra curated a section of the 16th Milan Tri-ennale entitled “Spazio reale-spazio virtuale” [Real Space-Virtual Space]. Through a series of installations, the archi-tect investigated how audio-visual media generated an ac-tual space and how that was related to the "real" space of the city (La Pietra 1979). La Pietra had long been interested in multimedia experimentation: his Immersioni [Immer-sions] (1967-70) were protovirtual environments composed of images, sounds, and wearable or inhabitable devices (La Pietra 1971).  La Pietra's work, well before the spread of the technologies we now call virtual reality, emphasized the spatial, architectural and urban nature of audio-visual forms, opening up theoretical and practical models that re-defined the relationship between the virtual and the real.

Inspired by these critical perspectives, the workshop aims at investigating how "new" media – with a particular focus on the immersive environments of virtual reality (VR) and the emersive practices of augmented reality (AR) - create an artificial space of their own in dialogue with the design and perception of the architectural and urban space, fos-tering productive contaminations and intertwining.

Virtual reality headsets create an environmental that sub-verts the traditional status of the image, in a way denying itself. Indeed, the image presents itself as unframed, im-mediate and immersive, in a word: an an-icon (Pinotti, Cavaletti 2020; Pinotti 2021). The spatial experience cre-ated by these devices, as well as the identity and performa-tivity of the users, must be redefined and described anew (Hofer et al. 2018; Champion 2019). Therefore, it is neces-sary to reframe an aesthetic of the virtual space (Champion 2021a; Tavinor 2021) to investigate this specific experience which always involves the body, but, at the same time, ex-cludes it.

VR and AR represent a new tool for architects and planners to rethink design in unprecedented perspectives (Virilio 1998; Bandi 2021, Parker 2021; Vilar et al. 2022). Those de-vices allow professionals, but also universities and acade-mies, clients and citizens, to quasi-live the project, not only visualising it but inhabiting its space. In short, virtual reali-ties change the way we represent and also our relationship with this representation.

Jaron Lanier, one of the firsts pioneers of virtual reality, has called this technology "a shared dream" (Lanier 2017), em-phasising VR’s dreamlike component (Grossi 2021). This characteristic leads to another field of application: virtual space has the potential to become a poietic collector of un-realised projects, a tool for the re-enactment of destroyed buildings or utopian cities that come to life through the en-vironmental image.

Beyond the headset lies the real city. Here, the vector from the virtual to the real changes direction (Milgram, Kishino 1994). Technologies such as augmented and mixed reality (MR) bring digital objects out of the urban fabric, both for practical (Duarte and Álvarez 2021; Sharma 2021) and cre-ative purposes (Kot 2021; Pirandello 2021; Shokrani et al. 2021), redefining, in the wake of Manovich (2006), new po-etics of augmented space. This perspective also includes the conservation and enhancement of architectural heritage that exploits these technologies to offer new forms of ex-perience of sites and architecture (Champion 2021 b).

Furthermore, these practices enter into dialogue with the concepts of mediascapes (Appadurai 1996; Casetti 2018) and media city (McQuire 2008) that confirm and articulate the intimate relationship between landscape, urban fabric and media (Verhoeff 2012; 2020; Montani et al. 2018)

In conclusion, the hyphen that separates "real space" from "virtual space" must be understood here not as a hiatus, but as the expression of a continuum: a process of hybridiza-tion and fluidification toward a sort of transarchitecture (Novak 1991; n.d.), opening a threshold between reality and virtuality. In this fold, this workshop will take place, spanning from theoretical moments to VR and AR experi-ences.

"Real Space-Virtual Space" is thus aimed at opening critical discussions and proposing research perspectives on topics such as:

- Mediarcheology of virtual architectural represen-tation.

- Designing in VR.

- Phenomenology and Aesthetics of the Virtual Space.

- Participatory design and virtual technologies.

- Unrealised projects and virtual or augmented real-ity.

- Cyberspaces and imaginary/utopian architecture.

- Virtual reality and architectural heritage.

- VR as a training tool.

- Cities, media and virtual practices.

Please find below a draft of the program