The 24 Hour Design Cycle: an Experiment in Design Collaboration over the Internet

This paper describes a Virtual Design Studio exercise involving three academic institutions University - Hong Kong (China), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and University of Washington, Seattle (USA) - whereby teachers and students, obviously on three different continents and in three different time zones, roughly eight hours apart, were working on a common design project using computer-aided design systems, video-conferencing and a web-based central database that managed and displayed all works throughout the process. The 24 hour design cycle is a metaphor for a more open and international approach to design, facilitated through computer networks. It implies a new form of collective authorship and distributed credits and thus deals with some of the essential challenges and opportunities the internet poses to creative disciplines