"This is the view from my home in Shamrock," Octal Khan tells me. (Direct teleport here.) "This is also the view (kind of) from my home in real life in Los Angeles, the main difference being in SL, I get to put it right by the ocean." He grins. "About a year ago, I got the idea to do a reconstruction of our mid-century modern RL home in Second Life. The architect, Gregory Ain, was a protege of Neutra and Schindler and one of the unsung heroes of early modernism, so I attempted it partially as an exercise in building, but also as a way to perpetuate Ain's ideas as a sort of 'ghost in the machine'.
"After taking lots of measurements and looking at the original plans for the house, I began the the task of looking for a suitable site to build on. I had been a SL member since early 2004, and my original 'free land' plot in Albion was now worth quite a bit, so I sold it and bought a bigger parcel in Shamrock, which was a new and relatively empty sim at that point (and much cheaper). I love the ocean so I chose a parcel right next to the coast, even though much of it was steep sub-marine escarpment... I also decided to script and build a working sound studio in the Southwest room of the residence. I now constantly hover about 10 prims shy of the 1976 prim allotment I have in Shamrock.
"The house is a work-in-progress, as I am constantly messing with it and tweaking prims to try and streamline it as much as possible. Although it's not a big house (only 1350 square feet), Ain was a very efficient and modular designer, using sliding walls and interlocking spaces to allow the resident to compartmentalize the home at will, transforming two smaller rooms into one larger room if desired. At some point in the future, one of my goals is to script those moveable walls to reflect their real life counterparts.
"There have been many many visitors to the home and I've made some great friends from meeting people with similair interests in architecture, design, and music. I've also gotten into business building modern prefab homes, and it's been great to meet design enthusiasts that way as well, and to see how they do up the homes after they buy them. Second Life is unique in that I don't think I could have done this in any other MMOG that I know of, and the social interaction, building and networking tools are a key part of the SL experience for me. (I suppose I'm an Augmentationist in that regard.) I now make enough from selling houses to pay my tier, and I hope I can keep the Ain Residence reconstruction up and running in-world this way for many years to come."
And where in the world do you live? Take a look at the entire Window series for inspiration, read the details for submitting to NWN's World From My Window series, then send me a screenshot or video link of your SL home or favorite haunt.
Driving back to work and listening to you on totn!
Posted by: bryan | Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 12:23 PM
wait I thought it was you but had to run. Was it you?
Posted by: bryan campen | Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 12:25 PM