Virtual Design Studio Research Articles

Collaboration between students and experts in a virtual design studio

The present study examined the design process as a socially and physically mediated activity. This activity was investigated in the context of design education, where students imported their design proposals into the virtual design studio; then, with external domain experts, they discussed and modified them. The study proposed a framework for constructing the horizontal and vertical development of design representations and for analysing expert participation through these representations within the virtual design studio. The results indicated that the design representations had an essential role in the process of continually improving design ideas. The conceptual and visual representations served as a basis for experts to evaluate and question students' design proposals or to create new ideas. In addition to the virtual collaboration, the feedback and ideas from the prototype-testing situation played a very substantial role in students' design decisions.

Alternativas de diseño: arquitectura para el ciberespacio como estrategia de enseñanza Caso Sede Virtual 3D Interactiva Multiusuario para el Taller Virtual de las Américas

Este artículo se orienta a describir productos del curso «Alternativas de Diseño 2005» que persigue preparar arquitectos del Departamento de Maestría de Computación en Arquitectura (LUZ-Maracaibo) aplicando una metodología basada en VRML y Java Script orientada a alcanzar una propuesta para el «Taller de Diseño Virtual Las Américas».

Digitally integrated practices: a new paradigm in the teaching of digital media in architecture

With the advent of the 21st century, the 25-year-old promise of multi-parametric modeling has re-emerged reincarnated as Building Information Modeling (BIM). Promoted by a trend toward Integrated Practices (IP), BIM can provide instrumentation for the design, representation, documentation of the projects, and the exchange of information among designers and other stakeholders. A growing number of disciplines in the design and construction industry are embracing the use of BIM and consequently the academia is addressing related training needs. This paper presents the accumulative experience of the authors over the last decade at Texas A&M University regarding digital media integration and our current plans for addressing future demands and opportunities. As a matter of introduction, the paper makes reference to early implementations of multi-parametric modeling in electronic design studios, early use of the Internet for the implementation of collaborative virtual design studios, and their evolution towards virtual multidisciplinary studios and fabrication studios that make use of BIM software. At the core, the paper explains how BIM can be a pedagogical tool for multidisciplinary integration and curricular articulation. The paper makes evident that BIM is more than a phenomena happening in the profession and something the academia must simply provide training for. The paper ends by drawing conclusions that outline how we can produce the design briefings of projects especially directed toward offering multidisciplinary learning opportunities in studios instrumented by means of BIM software. Key words: building information modeling, multiparametric modeling, integrated practices, digital media education.

Application of an Alternative Teaching Model in a Virtual Architectural Design Studio: Impacts and Constraints

This paper introduces an alternative teaching model in a virtual architectural design studio, its application, impacts and constraints. This model aims for achieving collaborative learning through facilitating students to Inhabit, Design, Construct and Evaluate (IDCE) their designs collaboratively in a multi-user real-time 3D virtual environment platform (Activeworlds). The application of this model in virtual design studio (VDS) teaching has favorably impacted students' motivation for active, creative and explorative learning, social dynamics between studio participants. It also fostered learning electronic communication, collaboration techniques and etiquette in addition to design technology. The model assisted in developing collaborative experience and shared responsibility. However, there are some drawbacks of the virtual environment platform that hindered having a responsive design environment to users' needs with especially in modeling and rate of viewing. The advantages and constraints of applying the IDCE teaching model in a multi-user real-time 3D virtual environment for first year students at the University of Sydney are addressed in this paper.

Differences and Dialogic Learning in a Collaborative Virtual Design Studio

With the ability of linking distant partners and diverse bodies of students and faculty, virtual design studios provide unique opportunities for examining cultural, contextual, and methodological differences in design and design collaboration. However, most evaluations of virtual design studio in the recent literature have focused primarily on technical and operational issues. In contrast, the social and cultural dimensions of virtual design studio and their pedagogical implications have not been adequately examined. To address this gap, this article examines the experience and outcomes of a recent virtual design studio involving international collaboration between faculty and student partners. Specifically, it looks at how presence of differences and process of dialogic learning create pedagogical opportunities in a collaborative 'virtual' environment. Based on the case study, this article argues that through dialogues, collaboration, and negotiation of cultural, contextual and methodological differences, collaborative virtual design studio offers an alternative to traditional design studio based on the primacy of individual practice and the master-apprentice model of learning. By creatively utilizing the collaborative environment involving diverse partners, virtual design studio can foster a critical understanding of cross-cultural design process and the significance of dialogues and negotiation in design.

Transformations in Design Education: The Paperless Studio and the Virtual Design Studio

Traditional architectural curricula have been based on the design studio model, which emphasizes learning by doing. Under this model, a typical architectural curriculum offers a sequence of design studios in which students learn to design by actually engaging in designing. Until very recently the design studio culture remained largely unchanged. The introduction of the virtual design studio and the paperless studio in early 1990s has resulted in fundamental changes in design studio pedagogy. The paper examines the impact of computers and information technology, as applied in the paperless studio and the virtual design studio, on design studio education. Based on literature reviews on paperless studio and virtual design studio and examination of architectural studio instruction, including several experiences in conducting paperless studios, the author considers the pedagogical shift occurring in design studio instruction as a result of integrating digital media in the design studio. The paper considers two types of transformations in studio instruction: pedagogical transformations related to using digital media as a design tool and pedagogical transformations related to distributing the design studio with some or all participants in remote locations.

Real-time immersive design collaboration: conceptualising, prototyping and experiencing design ideas

This paper discusses a collaborative trans-disciplinary virtual design studio project in which students designed while immersed within a real-time gaming environment. The ability to control and interact with a wide range of objects in-game allowed students to visually create, prototype and experience spatial and formal scenarios in real-time. Multi-player technology enabled the design team to be virtually present at the site of construction and to design while actively building and critiquing. It was found that the virtual environment enabled rapid testing of design iterations and extended the range of creative conceptual design responses.

Three design experiments for computer-supported collaborative design

The purpose of the present article is to examine how virtual design studio environments can be used to aid collaborative designing and to describe some of our experiences in supporting collaborative design with such environments. The authors will introduce three design projects. These were projects, respectively, for designing clothes for premature babies; conference bags; and tactile books for visually impaired children: they constitute a continuum in terms of being design experiments, each of which highlights certain perspectives on the virtual design process. Our approach, in which the first author was acting as a teacher in each project, made it possible to address current problems faced in the field of virtual designing. The purpose of our design experiments is set up, foster, and investigate an iterative design process, in which previous observations and lessons can be applied to the enhancement of educational settings and practices. The authors examined how participants create shared design ideas, to what extent users can be involved in the design process (participatory designing), and how expert knowledge is utilized. According to our experiments, the progressive inquiry model can fruitfully be applied to collaborative designing to facilitate participants' interaction processes of developing design ideas and sharing their expertise through the virtual design studio.

Assessment of the Use of 3D- Viewing and Mark-up Tool for Rich Network Design Communication

Though there have been many successful examples of Virtual Design Studio, there still exist unsuccessful cases in which participants felt dissatisfied or even frustrated, especially at synchronous stages of design_communication. A discussion that required designers to refer to 3D models was one of the situations where technical support was insufficient to satisfy the expectation of designers. Assuming that an interactive viewing of 3D models and use of a mark-up utility on a shared PC window could enhance such design communications (though this also requires network bandwidth and computational power) the author conducted experiments in design discussion between two designers to test the capability and effects of these tools for network collaborations. This paper discusses the framework and results of the experiments, and proposes the next step for system developments.

International virtual design studio (ivds) program: overview, challenges, and students' perspectives

An international undergraduate design project is reviewed in this paper. The International Virtual Design Studio (IVDS) project is a joint project among Queen's University, Middle East Technical University, and Union College. The objective of IVDS is to provide a collaborative design experience to students in different international locations. This paper is an overview of the program and its challenges, as well as a collaboration of ideas and suggestions collected from the IVDS participants and IVDS Coordinators through surveys. This paper complements the previous publication on the IVDS program in which the focus was on the program from the IVDS Coordinators' point of view. These two paper should be beneficial for the organizers of current and future international student design projects.

The Identity of Place in Virtual Design Studios

Since independence in 1991, Slovenian society has sought models for education in the West. As in Slovenia, schools of architecture situated in other countries of rapid social transformation are offered the opportunity to critically review examples of the virtual design studio (VDS). This article investigates such examples within the concepts of “identity” and “place.” These concepts are developed to include a consideration of the identity of virtual places and virtual studios and to examine the implications of globalization on architectural education. In conclusion, we develop an exploratory model for VDS as an instrument that integrates computer technology, distance learning, and design education.

A Shared Multi-Media Design Environment for Concurrent Engineering over the Internet

The Internet is currently an important resource for businesses to conduct activities ranging from basic communication to data exchange. In addition, the Internet is fast becoming an important portal for concurrent engineering applications. The Virtual Design Studio (VDS) presented in this paper is to construct a virtual design environment over the Internet in order to over come geographical constraints, and satisfy the major issues of concurrent engineering. Traditional design activities have been studied and implemented in the VDS to enable effective and efficient collaborative design. In addition, the proposed virtual design environment also supports both the product design and distributed communication tools used by designers. The aim of VDS is to integrate the exist ing information technologies (such as remote file transfer, multimedia and virtual reality among others) into the design process and to ex plore the possibility of extending collaborative design system over the Internet. This infrastructure will enable the establishment of distrib uted design offices in a global environment by means of the Internet. As such, collaborative design resources can be made readily available to industries, research institutions and educational institutions. CyberCAD is the application developed to support the realization of VDS. Remote file transfer and platform independence have been implemented in CyberCAD to enable the sharing of resources. CyberCAD provides a powerful collaborative CAD system running on a PC based platform. A multimedia communication enabled CAD conference module has been integrated into CyberCAD. Video and audio communications provide the collaborative multimedia environment, which overcome the geographical limitation in traditional "face to face" collaboration and enhances interaction between designers. Drag and drop method has been adopted in the proposed CAD conference module for re mote design information sharing.

The pedagogy of virtual design studios

Virtual design studios (VDS) are proliferating as schools of architecture experiment with the technology of the Internet. Discussions about VDS typically focus on technological issues — which hardware, what software — or environments — MOOs, ftp. Recently, some papers have been written on the perceptual issues and the social aspects of remote design collaborations, thus contributing to some of the contextual issues within which virtual studios are conducted. This paper contributes another perspective, presenting a review of the pedagogical issues raised in a VDS. It examines the difficulties and opportunities that present themselves in teaching a VDS.

The multidisciplinary international virtual design studio (MIVDS)

The International Virtual Design Studio (MIVDS) that was originated between the Departments of Mechanical Engineering of Union College (UC) and the Middle East Technical University (METU) is now extended to include the Mechanical Engineering Department at Queen's University in Canada, the Computer Systems Engineering/Electrical Engineering Department at UC, and the Electrical/Electronics Engineering Department of METU. The design teams that participate in this project are composed of various combinations of mechanical, electrical, and computer systems engineering students. Design project topics are selected to cover mechatronic concepts that force students toward mechatronic design solutions. After years of experience, it is now possible to draw some conclusions and report on the concept and implementation of the multidisciplinary IVDS (MIVDS) project. One important conclusion is that a strong combination of institutional support and multidisciplinary faculty commitment is required for project initiation. Success in MIVDS is highly dependent on well-defined project specifications, a single source of project information, incentives for students to participate, travel to participating countries, a balanced team structure, common design and productivity tools, 24-hour access to MIVDS facilities, and participation by all students in the manufacturing phase of the project.

In virtual fashion

Computer graphics and virtual reality are being combined to enable clothes-shoppers to serve as their own clothes models for garments that are digitally fitted and converted into unique 2D patterns. Everything off the rack in effect becomes custom tailoring, choice of fabric and all. The author describes how the virtual reality mannequin is developed from digital images of the body. The virtual design studio is then described. The characteristics of the materials used are incorporated into garment design. The computer modeling of cloth drape is discussed.

Review: Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present, Modelling the City: Performance, Policy and Planning, the People's Home? Social Rented Housing in Europe and America, Housing Women, the Natural and Built Environment Series 6. Partnership Agencies in British Urban Policy, European Research in Regional Science 4. Issues in Environmental Planning, Virtual Design Studio, a National Health Service?

Review: Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present, Modelling the City: Performance, Policy and Planning, the People's Home? Social Rented Housing in Europe and America, Housing Women, the Natural and Built Environment Series 6. Partnership Agencies in British Urban Policy, European Research in Regional Science 4. Issues in Environmental Planning, Virtual Design Studio, a National Health Service?