Assuming I have established a viable case for the 3D virtual workplace in post 1 and 2, what about the actual planning, design and virtual architecture required to support it? What are the new characteristics of this environment that deserve consideration when developing a virtual workplace? There is a lot to cover here, but I’ll do my best to include the main areas I think deserve the most attention.
First of all, the entire concept of user-generated content adds a unique twist to the virtual workplace. The ability …

Lets start with a brief thought trial before I get too far. Take a look at this familiar list of just some of the businesses who have, at some point, had a presence in Second Life: Accenture, AccuWeather, ABN AMRO, Aegon, Ajax Football Club, Alcatel Lucent, AMD, Armani, Autodesk, Ben & Jerry’s, Boots UK, BMW, BNP Paribas, Calvin Klein, Cecile: Ginza, Circuit City, Cisco Systems, Citroen Brasil, Coca-Cola, Coldwell Banker, Comcast, Congrex, Crowne Plaza, Dell Computer, Domino’s Pizza, Europ Assistance, Fox Atomic, Fujitsu Siemens, HermanMiller, H&R Block, Gax Technologies, Head …

I was noodling through my computer this morning, and noticed these courses ideas I wrote up last June that include Second Life as an integral part of a university level architecture studio. They were primarily intended as a simple brainstorming activity, so I thought I would share them here for you to review, use, improve:
Course 1: The Augmentation of Architecture
Given the rapid growth of virtual worlds, it has quickly become a feasible and popular destination for a vast range of functions, from conducting business, teaching classes, networking, sales, holding …

Tomorrow, Ryan Schultz and I are heading to Milwaukee to demonstrate Second Life to the American Institute of Architecture Students FORUM convention.
For my part, I put together a survey of everything I could think of related to architecture in SL, and Ryan put together a more philosophical perspective of how we think virtual worlds and web 2.0 will be affecting these students, as the next generation of architecture professionals. We will conclude with a live demonstration of the Wikitecture project, and show our progress to-date.
Beyond our demo, we have …

Can mass collaboration and collective intelligence improve the quality of architecture and urban planning?

We are happy to announce that, Studio Wikitecture will continue to try to tease out this question, via it’s 3rd Wikitecture experiment kicking off officially on Nov. 7th. To accommodate those in different time zones, there will be two different times: Wednesday, Nov. 7th @ 9:00am and 6:30pm PST/SLT.
The project on which this experiment will center around will be the competition recently announced by the Open Architecture Network. Competition sites range from a medical facility in rural …

Read the full release here.
Would you like to participate in the AMD Open Architecture Challenge on a global team of qualified and talented architects, designers and engineers? Studio Wikitecture invites you to just that.
In keeping with the spirit of the Open Architecture Network’s goal of ‘improving the living standards through collaborative design,’ we will be employing the next generation Wikitecture process in order to more fully enable true 3D collaboration by community members from around the world. In much the same way Wikipedia enables multiple contributors to collaborate …

I’ve decided to Open Source several of the scripts behind the Reflexive Architecture installations, with Fumon Kubo’s permission under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Since this work is inspired by so many others, it only makes sense to make these open and accessible in order to encourage their ongoing development and evolution. If you use these scripts, I strongly encourage you to share screenshots or machinima of whatever you create for publication here, in order to inspire others to continue developing this. More about reflexive architecture …

To expand on the idea of ‘Reflexive Architecture‘ in virtual environments, I’ve been experimenting with several installations that explore it’s potential. This video is a composite of several machinima pieces each describing a different installation in the gallery, such as Rippling Prims, Prim Decay, Sudden Space, Restless Spheres, Carvable Prims, Visible Traces, Moving Tiles, Interactive Glass, and The Cacoon. Some include sound as an integral part of the experience, which is best experienced first-hand (SLurl … subject to change).
In physical reality, architecture is a static and relatively motionless …

UgoTrade  has been doing some interesting research and reporting on virtual architecture, including a new post today (link) including coverage of the reflexive architecture installation, the Cntrl-Shift-07 competition, Theory Shaw, the Wikitecture progress, as well as the important work Eolus McMillan and the EOLUS One Initiative they have been working on.

Tomorrow, July 24th at 8AM SL-Time (PDT) I’ll be giving a demo of the ‘Reflexive Architecture’ interactive installation I’ve been working on as an extension of the Architectural Jazz piece.
In real life, we typically experience architecture and music in a passive role. The composition remains unchanged while we listen or observe. However, in a virtual environment, we have a unique opportunity to make the architecture responsive, or reflexive. The buildings can ‘know’ that we’re there, and react to our presence perhaps even remembering that we’ve been there, leaving visual …