Determining the content and organisation of material in RUDI is the task of the Library at Brookes, in conjunction with the University s world renowned Joint Centre for Urban Design. Sun Microsystems Ltd. The aim of RUDI is to provide extensive support for teaching, academic and professional activity, in the domain of urban design. It is intended that RUDI become the standard reference for students, academics, and practitioners, providing access to materials in the form of colour images, both still and moving, text, and sound. Data will range from complete case studies of particular developments at an urban scale, through profiles of the work of individual practices, to walkthroughs of contemporary schemes. In order to determine the requirements of end users, both academic and practitioners, an extensive survey of schools and companies is currently being undertaken.
Preliminary findings suggest that there is considerable demand in both fields for such a service.
It is clear that the vast majority of practices and institutions involved in teaching in the field of the built environment, will be connected to the Internet in the near future - at least in the next five years. But they also want a system which allows urban designers to communicate with each other, and to make available their own ideas and work. Providing this capability is a key objective of the project. It is hoped that in this way RUDI will be a powerful instrument in bringing together practice and education, precisely because it is dynamic and technologically extremely responsive to innovation in the urban design scene. The project opens up challenging issues concerning the relationship between technology and knowledge.