The Immersive Environments Lab (IEL), a partnership facility between the College of Arts and Architecture's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) and ITS' Graduate Education and Research Services (GEaRS), has for several years provided a unique venue for Penn State architectural design students to explore and evaluate, at human-scale and in full three-dimensions, the various project designs they create throughout their undergraduate studio experience.
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Penn State Architecture students tele-collaborate with design team counterparts from Carleton University in Ottawa as part of the participatory design studio project that is occurring throughout spring semester 2007. |
The IEL, now in its second generation design and in a new location in room 208 Stuckeman Family Building, offers an architectural visualization system consisting of a three-screen, panoramic, 3-D stereo-capable display enhanced by graphics workstations and related architectural design and multimedia applications. The lab is available to students 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to local visualization capabilities, the lab is also equipped with Access Grid® http://www.accessgrid.org/ teleconferencing technology, which provides the opportunity for multi-modal video conferencing and student sharing of virtual spaces. When coupled with imaginative students and innovative faculty, the capabilities of the IEL provide a unique opportunity for information-rich, tele-collaborative, virtual reality experiences in the classroom.
Katsuhiko Muramoto, associate professor of architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture, recognized the impact this technology could have on his third-year architecture students. Muramoto has been working with Michael Jemtrud, associate professor of architecture and director of the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) http://www.cims.carleton.ca/ at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, to establish the Participatory Design Studio (PDS) project.
The PDS represents a ground-breaking effort to enrich the education of architecture students at multiple institutions by supporting distributed, collaborative, team learning within the immersive information environment of the IEL. A primary goal of this collaborative initiative is to bring real world application of tele-collaborative tool sets to the architecture curriculum in a third-year studio.
Ultimately, the PDS project can provide a framework to allow architecture students at multiple locations to collaborate in real-time by sharing computational and networking resources, datasets, multimedia, and high-definition video tele-conferencing to simulate working as distributed job teams with a pseudo-client, Dr. Edward Smith, Penn State professor of aerospace engineering, to create the Penn State Vertical Lift Museum. The PDS project gives students the opportunity to partake in an experience as close to the professional world as possible in a number of ways.
First, the students are required to work in groups, as collaboration is central to real world architecture. The students formed groups of four: two Penn State students and two Carleton students. Each group of two has been working together since the beginning of the semester at their respective institutions, but in early February, they combined their ideas to work together towards a final product; tele-collaborating to form groups is another key element to providing a real world experience, as architects may work with others from around the world.
Since architecture students usually work alone in a third-year studio, the focus on group work is new, but the students are responding well because communication is strong between the universities and they understand the importance of this project.
In addition, architecture students are usually able to visit the site with which they are working. Since the site is Engineering Unit C, located at Penn State's University Park campus, the Carleton students must rely on the digitized information in drawings, photos, and video sent by Penn State architecture students, in order to create realistic work that coincides with their counterparts' work. Students are graded on their effort and ability to work in groups with others. With the focus on design teams, students are taking part in a unique method for teaching a once individualistic course; design teams are more common in the professional world of architecture.
While in the IEL during a tele-collaboration session with Carleton students, one can see how this cutting-edge technology is put to good use—almost like second nature to the students in how effortlessly they engage and interact with one another when explaining their projects. On one screen, Penn State students can see their Carleton classmates, on another screen is a PowerPoint or 3-D model, and the third screen can be used to control several aspects of the teleconferencing feed.
Penn Staters can now use the IEL to team up with other architects all over the world in one creative environment. Professor Muramoto notes how well students were able to describe their projects and to understand their partners' concepts and projects through use of this system. He continues to explain how the project is focused on participation due to its project-driven nature and on communication and dialogue and how useful it will be to students' careers. Professor Muramoto expects that this exposure to technology will be more useful in several years as it becomes common practice in the professional world.
Innovation is at the forefront of this project; with its complex configurations of commercially available state-of-the-art tools (many not originally intended for long-distance use), the PDS has become an easy-to-use enabler of long-distance design participation. And since Penn State had recently joined National LambdaRail (NLR), there is the potential for dramatic improvement in the tele-collaborative capabilities of the project in comparison to previously available networks. Sharing uncompressed standard-definition video, high definition video, and larger amounts of data will benefit from NLR connectivity. The project will also benefit from the CIMS's years of experience with end-to-end and user-controlled light paths, since the CIMS has been using light paths since 2005. The enhanced networking framework may also be used to facilitate seminars or meetings between department heads from each university.
Due to the receptive nature of this technology and its application to architecture studio and design, there is significant possibility for expansion in e-learning. Right now, Professors Muramoto and Jemtrud are working at the concept level to identify both successes and problems in the initial implementation; to rid the PDS of bugs in software and hardware; and to improve the overall usability and robustness for future users. They hope to be able to invite other universities to participate in this research and education effort, as they are among the first to conduct such design-oriented research within this tele-collaborative environment. The PDS is viewed as a long-term initiative, the current phase serving as a testbed and proof-of-concept to help secure ongoing support to carry the work forward. Professors Muramoto and Jemtrud intend to continue the PDS every spring semester. Also, they are looking for new opportunities to expand the application of this project into e-learning.
Faculty members interested in using this innovative technology in their teaching or in their research are encouraged to contact the GEaRS Visualization Group. More information about the IEL, including technical documentation and specifications, is found at http://gears.aset.psu.edu/viz/facilities/iel/, and inquiries may be sent to Visualization Group staff members at vizgroup@psu.edu.
