Virtual Design Studio

Introduction to the Virtual Village

There are no boundaries in a global village. Marshal! McLuhan Introduction to the Virtual Village jerzy Wojtowicz This title alludes to the long predicted, and now finally emerging condition of the global village. The term, initially used by Marshall McLuhan, describes a civilization where electronic communication media have dramatically reduced the distance and isolation of people from each other, thus virtually restoring the primeval sense of being of one tribe or village. Because of the proliferation of information technologies and the resulting acceleration of communication rates, the gap between thought and action is closing in the process of 'retribalizing' the world. Castell in turn argues that we are witnessing a second transformation of modern times.2 The first involved a change from an agrarian to an industrial mode of production. The second is a change from an industrial to an informational mode, where inputs are not material but knowledge based. This shift is characterized by a decentralization of different production functions and a flexibility in location. Telework and telecommuting, a manifestation of this transformation, will bring radical changes to our habitat patterns, as well as our educational and professional habits. 'Telework offers the promise of a return to the integrated living and working patterns of the pre-industrial age.'3 Such a claim is not premature. The fundamental changes to our society, our life-style and to the way we practise design have already begun to occur. Our project titled the 'Virtual Village' can be seen as an interesting illustration of the work and study patterns in this emerging information age. It is also a modest commentary on the limits of this transformation . This book is composed of several short essays written 2 Virtual Design Studio by participating tutors, followed by an assemblage of plates illustrating various aspects of the project and an appendix consisting of a rich record of e-mail exchanges , and critical commentaries. The Postscript picks up one year after the conclusion of the Virtual Design Studio, detailing the second Virtual Design Studio. The first essay, 'The Modernist Collectives' by K.C. Lye, reminds us that the notion of collective creative effort and teamwork was characteristic of the early modernist design cultures, a characteristic which is becoming current again due to the growing popularity of computing and networks. The history of the project and its implications are outlined in 'Digital Pinup Board' by myself, James Davidson and Takehiko Nagakura. Next Davis van Bakergem discusses the Washington University experience and contributions, followed in sequence by brief critical reflections from John Bradford and Renato Garcia of the University of Hong Kong and Colin Seow of the University of British Columbia. The essay titled 'Aspects of Asynchronous and Distributed Design Collaboration' by Wojtowicz, Papazian, Fargas, Cheng and Davidson argues that the asynchronous nature of a networked collective is one of the important features of this medium. The final word belongs to William Mitchell of MIT in 'The Future of the Virtual Design Studio' where he says, Virtual Design Studio establishes a new paradigm for CAD and responds to a fundamental change in the conditions of design practice.' He projects the future Virtual Design Studio as an endless network charrette. The networking integration of digital video with computational processes and hand-held wireless digital telecommunications devices will radically change the daily practice conditions of an architect. Our understanding of the Kat Hing Wai site and of walled villages once typical to this region of South China, is based on a 1975 survey conducted by architecture students of the University of Hong Kong supervised by Patrick Lau. Their measured drawings became an important reference for the Virtual Design Studio (see Plate 2). However, the meaning of the electronic village, based on crossing cultural boundaries and existing only in virtual reality, seems distantly related to those rigorous labours.4 Illustrations of the Virtual Design Studio are presented on Plates 1-45 with minimal rhetoric, yet they are of central importance. They are the evidence of creative investigation on the part of participating students and faculty from the five design schools connected via Internet. Located in four different time zones, design ideas recorded as object binary files and ASCII messages were formulated, exchanged and assembled. While at their workstations, students created a library of geometric models and renderings depicting elementary design notions built up from individual contributions. These ideas served as the formative source for collective design proposals which were presented on...