The paper examines the epistemological mutations that are related to the emergence of the “paperless studios” at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). The “paperless studios”, which were conceived in 1992, established a new set of terms for the on-going conversation on the role of digital tools in architectural education. The paper explains how new concepts of spatiality emerged thanks to the experimentation with geometry and virtual reality. Its main objective is to render explicit that these experimentations should be understood beyond their formalistic characteristics, since their very force lies in their capacity to transform architectural artefacts’ ontological status. The paper also explores an ensemble of new online practices employed in architectural design studio teaching. It presents several approaches of collaborative digital architecture design teaching within virtual environments, scrutinizing the impact of technology-based instruction environments on the learning processes in various architectural schools all around the world. Comparing collaborative learning strategies with individualistic strategies of distance learning, as far as the teaching of architectural design studio teaching is concerned, the article aims to shed light on how methods of teaching that are based on the creation of networks offering to students the opportunity to develop informal social relations are more efficient that those that are based on more individualistic methods.