Imagining technicities: ICT taste and skill as elements in the configuration of virtual worlds architecture

The actors of the building industry have access to a range of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and are constantly presented with new software and new communications platforms. Through case studies, and inspired by sociotechnical approaches to the study of emerging technologies, this article focuses on innovative uses of virtual worlds in architecture. We interviewed architects, industrial designers and other practitioners. Conceptually supported by an understanding of technicity found in Cultural Studies, the interviews were then coded with a focus on interviewees' references to the elements of taste and skill. In the final analysis those references were synthesized as five imagined technicities: the architect, the engineer, the client, the Chinese, and the Virtual World native. Because technicities are often assumed and rarely discussed as actants who influence practice, their role in cooperation and development of ICTs seems to pass unnoticed. However, since they are aligned into ICTs, technicities impact innovation.