The following paper essentially focuses on the innovative use of an open-source programming language, called 'Processing', in the architecture curriculum and the development of a line of teaching beginning with Processing and ending with object-oriented programming in Java. This represents one creative possibility through which students are able to overcome the typically difficult step of learning a programming language and simultaneously learn how to apply it as a design tool.

In a time shaped by technological developments dissolving the boundaries between the real and the virtual world, we are challenged to newly define the potentials of virtual and mixed reality in the field of landscape architecture. Critical analyses of the primary application areas of these technologies show that the current focus mostly lies on the optimization of 3D visualization and navigation in virtual space. Within professional practice, mixed reality tools are increasingly being used to test and communicate design decisions, for marketing purposes, and more often, within the smart building industry as well. Thus far, the incorporation of immersive environments in landscape architecture is lacking research on human-centered data interaction and the perception of space. At Aalto University, Finland, the team of Pia Fricker, Professor of Practice for Computational Methodologies in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, researches new immersive co-design methodologies to introduce new meaningful trajectories for participatory processes. Mixed reality applications are thus extended beyond common and conventional uses to help create multidisciplinary immersive interactive spaces using data informed processes. The research and teaching results showcased in the article address international discourse on the larger theme of "Digital Humanism-Big Data and Human-Centered Design."

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This paper explores and reflects on an integrative computational design thinking approach, which requires the melding of computation, design and theory as a conceptual framework, to be implemented in architectural education. Until now, digital design education is typically based on the introduction of digital tools and plugins at university courses and the subsequent application of these tools to design tasks of limited architectural complexity. At this time, technological advancement has not been matched by a comparable advancement in computational design thinking. The paper describes in detail a novel conceptual framework for course setup that illustrates the using of computational design as a manner of thinking in patterns of interaction across various scales, reaching from building design to regional planning. This approach was subsequently tested in a series of master-level studios, the results of which will be presented as case studies in this paper.