Participation, Intersubjectivity, and Presence in a Digitally Mediated Workspace: a Participatory Design Studio between Pennsylvania State University and Carleton University

Abstract

A paradigm shift in the world of architecture brought by the recent developments in visualization and communication technology not only offers us drastically different ways to collaborate, but also questions traditional location dependent collaborations. This new technology offers us new possibilities for a more phenomenologically rich mode of creative activity and participation. The goal of the Participatory Design Studio was to allow architecture students in multiple locations to collaborate in real-time by sharing computational resources, geometric datasets, and multimedia content including high-definition video. The technologies involved in this research include the National LambdaRail (layer 3, PacketNet with 1Gb/s connection) and CA*net 4 (Canadian broadband layer 2 with 10gb/s lightpath connectivity) allowing Standard Definition videoconference, utilization of Deep Computing Visualization, Remote Visual Networking (RVN) and Web Service access and control of the APN devices through the dashboard solution that makes integration seamless to the workflow and transparent to the user