New models of computer-based universities

The overcoming of space and time constraints applicable to the old ways of transmitting knowledge and the multimedia and interactive nature of the new communication tools represent an unprecedented challenge and a precious opportunity for reformulating, from a theoretical perspective, as well as of renewing, in practice, the traditional training procedures of professional profiles in the field of engineering. The specific training required to the engineer-architect that will work in the Third Millennium is involved in a set of parameters very unlike those that are widespread in traditional universities on which nowadays professionals have to rely for their training. The new engineer will have to understand and manage pressing issues such as products and buildings lifecycle issues, environmental sustainability, energy resources sparing and so on in a continuous connection and cultural confrontation with the global network that is ever increasing widespread and puts on the market everybody’s skills. The model linked to the micro-territory becomes obsolete and a new futuristic model, already imagined in the previous century takes shape (Beguinot, 1989), as a reference point for today’s new dimension. The task of the university is therefore that of coordinating and managing this complex process, leading professional profiles towards a cross-field and at the same time specialised training that makes them actors of global knowledge, without being victims of it, but changing their attitudes towards knowledge into a cultural self-promotion that will not scatter their competencies, but make them essential and indispensable to global development.