Working with Wiki, by Design

Abstract

Andrew Burrow and Jane Burry explain the use of online platforms, such as wiki, employed by the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University in Melbourne. As they demonstrate, these platforms enable projects whose participants span the globe, in turn situating SIAL within an internationally distributed design research network incorporating diverse forms of expertise. This includes the academic research under way at SIAL, much of which is done collaboratively with various other design and research entities, as well as the international work of SIAL's director Mark Burry, who has been developing innovative design and fabrication methods for the completion of Gaudí's complex proposal for the Sagrada Família church. SIAL's wiki platform collapses geographic and temporal distance to allow geographically dispersed agents to collaborate in unprecedented ways, integrating widely diverse sets of knowledge into the design process. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.