Internet studios: design studios online among seven schools of architecture in the United States and Latin America

This paper analyzes the pedagogical use of high-end computer graphics, and of low- and high-bandwidth Internet technology for international architectural education between numerous universities in the Americas. The findings can be applied to any discipline that consists of a large number of participants within a design setting. The experiments, during the past two years, have allowed design studios from seven schools of architecture to work concurrently in a semester long design studio located in Miami, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Santiago de Chile, Valparaiso, Mar del Plata and Santa Fe de Argentina, with more than 130 students and 20 professors. The majority of the collaboration has been accomplished by using low-bandwidth Internet communication such as Web publishing, Chat, Web3D, RealPlayer, IP videoconferencing, CAD software, and other technologies such as ISDN broadcasting. New grants, obtained from Global Crossing, Cisco, and Lucent Technologies, from the Ampath project at FIU, Miami, support future experimentation with high-bandwidth technologies on the Internet 2 Abilene Network.