143 { A C C O L A D E } Introduction Virtual Environments have long been seen as the magical medium which should allow a seamless fusion between design and review during the architectural design process. Reality shows, that the largest part of in-use virtual environment applications do not come further as extended walkthrough applications, which allow a limited amount of editing of (often predefined) objects within virtual space. With respect to more advanced modelling functionality, most applications are still desktop based. Though mostly sold as “virtual reality” applications, these desktop applications do not apply the broad range of possibilities and limitations enabled by so called immersive Virtual Environments (VEs), computer generated environments which allow the user to get the illusion of exchanging the real world with a virtual world. This feeling, often referred to as “presence” (feeling of being there) is strongly related to immersion, but involves a large body of factors which will not be handled in this article. Supporting Shared Architectural Understanding Spatial knowledge transfer within Virtual Environments Ernst Kruijff, Dirk Donath caad@archit.uni-weimar.de InfAR – computer science in architecture Faculty of Architecture, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Abstract This article describes how architects can use the strengths of an immersive or semi-immersive virtual environment to create a shared understanding about a design problem. Virtual environments can allow the strong shared understanding under particular circumstances within a collaborative design set-up. The authors will describe which particular factors of shared understanding could be supported within a virtual environment, and which kind of requirements this poses on the virtual environment itself, and the technology which generates the environment. Specifically focused is at how one can create a common understanding of the spatial construction and meaning of a preliminary design idea. Therefore, a major focus is at the transfer of spatial knowledge about architectural space.