The use of digital tools in architecture and design education has been experimented with since the 1990s. The representation and communication of architectural narratives have been facing an unprecedented challenge in education, research, and practice during the past couple of years. This study investigates if using 360-degree photography/video and virtual reality (VR) technologies can be beneficial in architectural education. It focuses on museums and their storage facility areas and buildings, and looks at how digital technologies can raise awareness of these spaces and improve future museum designs. Starting from the fact that museums usually lack a proper storage area due to wrong designs, this project has investigated how the subject of museums is treated in design courses and, how VR representation could help students visualise and immersively navigate an area usually not known to many: the storage facility. The digital representation of real objects and the environment using 360-degree photography/video and VR technologies were tested on international architecture students in The Netherlands and Germany. The research methods combined qualitative and quantitative approaches (e.g., interaction, surveys, interviews, and visual/narrative devices) related to museums and cyber-ethnography. The results demonstrate how the digital tools positively affected students’ consciousness of museums and architectural qualities and how they inspired students to explore the area further. Students became more engaged and motivated throughout the workshops; they were able to learn from and compare different resources, providing valuable quanti-qualitative results. This paper will describe how 360-degree photography and VR visualisation were integrated into the existing teaching approaches.

Collections-based organizations (CBOs) can play a crucial role in addressing sustainable development (SD), but their aspiration to become more sustainable, as seen in policies and guidelines, is confronted with several challenges in practice. To facilitate a sustainability transition, this process of change needs to be managed and adequate tools adopted and implemented. Many tools exist to support this transition; however, a scarcity of centralized resources available to CBOs might negatively affect the integration of sustainability practices in their work. With the aim to address this gap, ICCROM launched the project “Our Collections Matter” (OCM) and developed an online toolkit (OCMT) to centralize resources and help CBOs align their work to the UN Agenda 2030. Recently, a workshop was organized with professionals in the field to discuss shared challenges and aspirations and to test the OCMT. This study reflects on how such centralization of resources can contribute to overcoming existing challenges and support the sustainability aspirations of CBOs, fostering change in the field. To do that, the workshop outcomes are analyzed and discussed from a change management perspective, looking at the impact that the OCM project and its activities can have on fostering change, and the role that ICCROM can play in facilitating the sustainability transition of the field.

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