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Municipal, government and private organizations around the world struggle to design projects that serve their communities and harmonize with the urban landscape and infrastructure, but it's hard to convey vision to stakeholders, socialize aspects of design and achieve consensus. I moderated a panel of planners, architects, designers, and Second Life developers that discussed how each was using Second Life and/or OpenSim to present, test, collaborate about, and socialize design for physical world architectural and engineering applications. Reflecting upon the presentations and discussions given by the prestigious panel below, a few things occurred to me: - Conceptual designs are being tested in Second Life and have resulted in significant cost savings to the engineers, architects and planners.
- The Second Life developer community is employing the same management tools that those of us who’ve worked in the engineering/architectural industry do for planning, scheduling, budget, resource management and manpower allocation.
- Community involvement programs and planning meetings are being or have been developed for specific physical world projects using the Second Life platform.
- There are ongoing technical issues that need to be dealt with through Linden Lab or third party application development.
Panelists included: Terry Beaubois who’s Second Life work has been written about in Popular Science, Newsweek International, and Architectural Record; and presented to AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), AIA (American Institute of Architects), and the NIBS (National Institute of Building Sciences) discussed his lab’s selection by the Governor of Montana to lead a multidisciplinary, collaborative team in a two-year, federally funded, state-wide education project that will involve a number of Web2.0 applications, including 3D internet programs. Dr. Cristina Lopes discussed her work on the SkyTran simulation in SL, as well as more recent work on GIS and the use of OpenSim. Her work there focuses on two main interests: search and modeling of complex engineering systems. Currently she is modeling and simulating a transportation system called SkyTran, according to its physical-world specifications. Eric Gordon talked about what Hub2 (http://hub2.org) an organization that employs emerging 3D virtual world technologies to enhance community engagement in the urban planning process. It is designed to work alongside developers’ current community outreach methods, while providing residents with a deeper engagement with the design process and greater accessibility to the ideas emerging from within the community. Jon Brouchoud, co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, uses Second Life as a platform for architectural collaboration to explore whether an open source paradigm and the group's collective intelligence can be harnessed to create innovative architectural and urban design solutions in both the real and the virtual world. Their most recent project was chosen as winner of the overall 'Founder's Award' out of over 500 entries worldwide in the Open Architecture Challenge, an international architecture competition, developed entirely in Second Life. Ron Blechner, a visionary and virtual world developer discussed the planning, implementation and delivery of some of Involve!’s high-profile projects, the San Jose Tech Museum and The Weather Channel. The following is the recorded session (with a few technical annoyances built in!)
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