New World Notes

Award-Winning Architects To Showcase Their Housing Plans in OpenSim (Update, Added Interview with the Developers)

Very interesting news via the Arch Network: A group of award-winning architect/design studios called Hometta are about to launch "H-Town," a virtual world showcase of their real world building designs. It's been developed in OpenSim, and unless I'm mistaken, it's the most prominent real world commercial application of Second Life's open source spinoff so far. (At least in the West.) Not just a platform for 3D model displays, H-Town will also let prospective Hometta clients experiment with different paint, furniture, and landscape choices. Much more here.

Update, 3/30: Just received some more details from Hometta's Ann Chou:

Hamlet Au: What inspired you guys to use OpenSim? Why not Second Life?

AC: While we currently use OpenSim, we may expand in the future. The purpose of our virtual world, H-Town, is to give our customers an additional tool in visualizing their prospective home. Although Second Life and OpenSim have a lot of similarities, there are several reasons why we chose OpenSim over SecondLife. We intend for H-Town to create a design community, whereas a real estate market has already been developed in Second Life. In order to build this kind of development project, we have to invest quite a bit to acquire several lots. Under OpenSim, the basic [SL] rate could provide four sims.

In order to simulate the real houses, the houses in H-Town must attain a certain level of detail. In Second Life, we have a prim limit of 117 prims in 512 m2, as well as the texture uploaded fee.

OpenSim seems more appropriate for H-Town's purpose, as it allows to develop a private community. Of course, Second Life has a lot of traffic. We see Second Life as a potential outlet for Hometta in the future.

Can Second Life Help Save a Legendary Surfing Spot?

The Trestles is a strip along the California coastline cherished by surfers and nature lovers alike, and its extreme popularity threatens the area with erosion, while also being a public safety hazard. (You have to cross an active railroad to reach it.) Constructing a secure and environmentally friendly walkway to the Trestles is the latest challenge of the Open Architecture Project, and Studio Wikitecture, the Second Life-based, wiki-powered architecture group, is submitting a collaborative design to the competition. The group's last Open Architecture submission, for a medical clinic in Nepal, won a "Founder's Award", garnering praise "for embracing a truly collaborative way of working using online crowd sourcing and Second Life as a way to create a highly participatory design approach." I can't wait to see what they innovate for this new project. However, they need help completing it, particularly more space in Second Life to iterate the design. Read more about the project and is needed for it here.

Image: openarchitecturenetwork.org

Student Prototypes Aquaponics Eco Tower in Second Life

One day, acclaimed virtual/real life architect Keystone Bouchard happened upon a student in Second Life who was prototyping an aquaponics eco tower, designed to eliminate human starvation in an environmentally sustainable way, and was duly impressed. And if Keystone is impressed, so am I.

Read more about it here, check the blog of the builder, Brendon Bilavio, here, and why not visit it [here SLURL]?

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Establishes Licensing Agreement with Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum in Second Life

This is excellent news -- according to Jon Brouchard of the Arch Network, the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum, which launched in Second Life last year to much enthusiasm, is now officially partnered licensed with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which was established in 1940 by the great builder himself. (I just got confirmation of the arrangement from someone with the Foundation.) To my knowledge, this is by far the highest profile partnership licensing agreement between a world class architect and a Second Life presence. Visit the sim yourself, aptly called Usonia (named after FLW's vision for US architecture) -- [SLurl here]

Update, 2/4: Tomorrow (Feb 5th), there's going to be a building contest at the Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum "to see who can create the most functional and appealing building within the parameters of the Usonian ideals of Frank Lloyd Wright." More details in New World Notes' events guide for this week.

Los Angeles Architect Uses Second Life to Develop Multi-Million Dollar, Mixed Used Shopping Mall Project in Egypt

Cleopatra Water Courts Project construction site in Cairo; DB Bailey in SL conceptual build he showed to client to win the commission

What you're looking at above left is the construction site of the Cleopatra Water Courts project in Cairo, Egpyt, a shopping mall complex that'll likely cost tens of millions dollars to complete. What you're at looking above right is the architect's conceptual model that got his design for it approved -- not a real world model, not a watercolor painting, not even an AutoCAD file. Rather, it's a build created in Second Life, which Los Angeles-based architect David Denton (known in SL as DB Bailey), showed his client, an Egyptian tycoon who funded the project. On that score, this is almost certainly the most expensive, ambitious real world project using Second Life as a platform.

Denton, who was previously a managing partner of legendary architect Frank Gehry, told me about the project at last August's Second Life Community Convention, but only recently did his collaborators in Egypt send along the photo above -- tangible proof that the build he showed me last year in Second Life is well on its way to being constructed. (It's expected to be complete in three years.) What's more, when it came time to convert the SL design into a usable AutoCAD file for the building contractors, David worked in Second Life from LA with two architects in Egypt, who also happened to be Muslim women -- a collaboration that might not be as feasible otherwise. And that's not even considering his Parkinson's disease.

Wiki Tree, Revolutionary Metaverse-Based Architecture Tool, Now Open Souce

Great news from Studio Wikitecture: the code for Wiki Tree, the groundbreaking, award-winning Wikipedia-meets-3D building architecture tool developed by Keystone Bouchard and Theory Shaw, is now open source, under a BSD license. "It is our hope," writes Keystone, "that the Open Source Wiki Tree 3D project will take on a life of its own, and grow to be something bigger and better than we can currently conceive of." More details for getting the code and helping grow the Wiki Tree dev community here.

Answering Obama's Call, State Department Sponsors Second Life Event Connecting Architects in the West and Middle East

Tomorrow at 10am SLT/Pacific, the US State Department is sponsoring a Second Life event bringing together architects in the West and Egypt who all use virtual worlds in their professional work. From Cairo, urban planner and architecture professor Amr Attia (Archi Vita in SL) will join Wikitecture co-founder Jon Brouchoud (Keystone Bouchard in SL) from Wisconsin, professor Judy Cockeram (JudyArx Scribe in SL) from Auckland, and architect David Denton (DB Bailey in SL) from Los Angeles, in a panel on architectural design and international collaboration in virtual worlds." Attia and Denton have worked in SL for the last two years, collaborating on a Egyptian mall that was conceptualized in Second Life. (I plan on writing about that project soon; for now, above, another design by Denton in SL.)  The event is partly a response to President Obama's speech in Egypt, where he spoke of creating a "new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo."

Many more details here on Keystone's blog. Direct SLurl to USC's Annenberg Island, where the panel starts this Sunday at 10am, here.

Hat tip: my RL partner Schlink Lardner, who was involved in a lot of behind-the-scenes connection of the appearing players.

Keystone's World: Innovative Architect Opens Cost-Effective Development Platform In OpenSimulator

Keystone Bouchard, the architect famed for co-creating the groundbreaking Wikitecture design system in Second Life, is expanding his efforts into OpenSimulator with Architecture Islands, and is opening it up to other designers. Cost: Six sims for $150/month and a $220 setup fee, with full remote desktop access and server control, and perhaps best of all, a save/restore function. What can you build with all that land? Here's some suave machinima from Bouchard, to show you. One of his goals with this OpenSim grid is to create a community of architects and builders in the same immersive space. "Architecture Islands in Second Life spawned Wikitecture, and several other unique innovations and design theories," he notes. "What new innovation can be invented within the context of OpenSim?

Catch an In-World Demo of Wikitecture Today at 5pm SLT

Speaking of last-minute event announcements, there's a live demo of Wikitecture, the revolutionary, award-winning Wiki-meets-SL building tool for architects, today at 5pm SLT. More details at Ziff-Davis' Smarter Technology, which is hosting the event. Wikitecture founders Keystone Bouchard and Theory Shaw will be there in person, of course. Direct SLurl to the site at this link.

How Useful Is Second Life For Architects? "Linden Prize" Winner Compares Pros And Cons With OpenSimulator

Landmark "Rietveld Schröder House" recreated in OpenSim by Jon Brouchard using an imported SketchUp file(source)

As I noted last week, one of the first "Linden Prize" innovation awards deservedly went to Wikitecture, the innovative building platform that uses Second Life to design architecture spaces in a collaborative, "wiki" style. Co-created by real life architect Jon Brouchard (known as Keystone Bouchard in SL), it is in my opinion one of the most powerful real world applications of Second Life. However, that's not to say this makes SL an ideal virtual world platform for architects, at least not yet. In recent months, as it happens, Brouchard has started doing more architecture work in realXtend, the OpenSimulator virtual world, using Visibuild, a new service that enables the importation of 3D StudioMax, SketchUp, and other industry standard 3D authoring files.  (Here's his own company site, a great reference for architects interested in virtual world technology for architecture.)

Why the shift to OpenSim?  Last week I emailed Jon congrats, and then asked him.