Virtual Design Studio: Multiplying Time

This paper describes a Virtual Design Studio exercise involving three academic institutions—University of Hong Kong, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and University of Washington in Seattle—whereby teachers and students, obviously on three different continents and in three different time zones, roughly eight hours apart, tried to “multiply time”. Students were asked to design a house for a Chinese painter and a Swiss writer on a small island in Puget Sound near Seattle. In a short and intensive design charrette, students explored in five different phases various dualities associated with the given design problem. In each phase students were asked to select someone else’s design, thus implicitly forming design teams. The paper describes the structure and goals of the studio exercise, the methodologies applied, the resulting design processes, and the lessons learned.