Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Second Life online platform provides surrogate design environment offering students a creative advantage
This semester, Dr. Susan Rodiek’s third-year design studio created a real-world project, the “Pico de Paz — A Therapeutic Retreat,” in the very unreal environment of Second Life, an online virtual reality community.
The Second Life platform, created and supported by Linden Labs of California, allows individuals to create an avatar, or a representative character, that they control in the online world. Users have the ability to change their appearance, interact with others, and modify their environment “in world,” within the platform’s digital environment.
Using the Second Life tools, the 12 students in Rodiek’s studio each designed separate buildings for the 8,500-square-meter retreat, which includes spas, a meditation center and a health-related bookstore. They then worked in teams to develop the infrastructure of walkways and outdoor common spaces.
Several distinguished companies have already been using the Second Life platform to promote their brand identity and even to host virtual, face-to-face business meetings. Rodiek is one of a few pioneering the use of Second Life as an architectural education tool.
“Second Life benefits the students with the ability to move through 3-D space,” Rodiek said. “The students can see from the perspective of a wheelchair, look out windows, and see other people in the online world.”
The students began by creating their own personal avatar, or digital representative in the virtual world. They then designed and built the individual buildings in real-time and on the actual site.
Because the avatars have the ability to interact with other avatars in the platform, students were able to watch each other build their projects and could talk to or text each other during the construction.
As the buildings emerge, the designers can use their avatar to enter the structure, view the interior, look through windows and access the views. As a result, several students said they modified their buildings to be more compatible with their surroundings.
“In three weeks,” Rodiek said, “the students had created multi-story buildings that were more complete and detailed than would have been possible with conventional methods.”
The finished projects were projected on a wall-size screen at the college’s Visualization Laboratory allowing students to lead live tours through their virtual buildings.
Rodiek plans to have students utilize Second Life next semester to renovate an existing building for the Brazos Valley Council on Alcohol and Substance Abuse (CASA).
More information on Second Life is available at secondlife.com
- Posted: April 23, 2009 -
