International industrial design studio project: Design for development in the era of collaborative networks

This paper reports on the progress and Australian findings relating to an international collaborative and distributed industrial design studio project extending over four years between universities in Australia, the Americas and more recently Europe. Primarily the project was run from a third year industrial design studio unit at UWS and later it benchmarked Australian students with counterparts elsewhere in Canada (Alberta University) and Chile (Metropolitan University of Technology, UTEM). While this is an ongoing project that is still to reveal more results, this paper builds on previous reports explaining more precise structural and technical details to extrapolate lessons learnt and offer some of its main outcomes to others. The experience so far has already highlighted important issues relating to collaborative networks, social capital and future implications for design, education and manufacturing beyond functionalist paradigm.