Submitted by David Denton, AIA – http://www.daviddenton.com
Actually this dispatch is from California. We have just returned after five weeks in Cairo. We came home feeling good about what we accomplished.
Our final presentation took place at the client’s home, a beautiful villa on the Nile River. We used the Second Life model and essentially no drawings (only one available for orientation). I did not ask the client to take control of the avatar, as I had found that some people are uncomfortable with this. All in time.
After a heart-stopping moment of confusion before the presentation because no one knew the Wi-Fi code for the house, it occurred to us to ask for the thirteen year-old son, who of course knew what to do. That is one of the problems of being dependent on the internet for presentation. We had hard copy backups too, but those would not have come close to telling the story.
The presentation was a great success. The client loved the design and the idea of presenting it in the virtual world. He said he now wanted to build the entire complex in the virtual world, which will take two full sims. His only suggestion was that there were too many columns in the hypostyle hall (à la Karnak Temple), if we really did insist on doing a bit of pharaonic architecture. He was right.
He asked us to meet later in the day with his Italian wife Daniela, who runs her own business in Cairo, which includes developing hotels. Thus she knows how to read architectural plans. We made the same presentation to her, but in this case she had many critical but constructive suggestions. At the end of the presentation, I asked her opinion of this means of designing and presenting. She said that the reason she had so many comments was because of the nature of the presentation vehicle. She loved it but the problem was that you could also see all of the areas in which the design was not resolved. Renderings from 3d models and even video walk-throughs can ignore unresolved issues but with real time virtual world presentation, there are no lies.
I was aware of this as I was working on the design. It’s like painting a picture: all parts of the creation have to be brought along at the same rate. It adds to the stress, but in the end creates a better design.
It’s hard to say how much the design benefited from this vehicle and how much it might have been compromised due to the limitations of this building program. But all in all, all of us involved have come away with a very positive experience and excited about what it means for the future of architectural design.
What we do with all of this is now the question. We have a proposal submitted to the client for additional expenditures to build the entire project in Second Life. We hope he will accept it and we will move forward. The hotel and the office building have yet to be designed, so there will probably be more trips to Cairo. Since returning to California, however, I have been working with the Egyptian crew in world and find it effective, but not as efficient as being there in person. We’ll get better at it. It is a lot of fun, but even SL can’t solve the time difference.
We would very much like to hear from anyone who has had similar experience with designing a RL project in SL, or who has an interest in exploring this venue. We hope there will be more chapters to this story and more dispatches to come. Please come visit at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Locus/40/144/121.
And yes, our dog remembered us and the Egyptians are still excited that our President Obama will address them in Cairo next month.
