[ Page 2 of 2 ]

Second Life and Google Earth are transforming the idea of architectural collaboration
By Christopher Kieran

	click images to view larger Terry Beaubois’s Second Life character, Tab Scott, reviews student design work in an on-line gallery created as part of his class, “Digital Collaboration for Architects” (top). Users of Google Earth (left) are rapidly developing 3D versions of the real world. Image: courtesy Terry Beaubois
	Image: courtesy Google

Had Jane Jacobs lived to see Second Life secondlife.com), the urban advocate might have been surprised to find that a Web site offers the most promise for gauging public opinion of proposed architecture.

Second Life, which is a kind of synthesis of the games SimCity and The Sims, allows registered users to exist within a rapidly developing alternative, Web-based world. Anyone can design buildings within the site, which makes it especially appealing for architects looking for feedback on buildings long before construction begins.

Since fall of 2005, Terry Beaubois, AIA, has taught a course using Second Life at the Montana State University School of Architecture. “It’s an immersive 3D environment where I can visit with students and monitor their projects,” Beaubois says. “It doesn’t replace CAD, but it’s a supplement for our technology that helps us learn to collaborate.” Beaubois often teaches remotely from his base in California, but he facilitates Montana State’s Creative Research Lab. He says the lab’s mission is to research the application of technologies in CAD, Google Earth/SketchUp, and Second Life to architectural education and architectural practice.

Unlike Google Earth, which allows users to import digital architectural models into a map of the real world, Second Life is composed of a mainland and private islands. Users create an avatar to be their virtual representative. Every user—and there are currently more than 2 million registered on the site—accesses the same world, so every avatar you encounter in Second Life is the digital face of a live user.

Second Life has an internal building system, which uses an interface that lets you manipulate geometric shapes to form more complex objects. Using Second Life’s group creation platform, Beaubois and his students can work in the same interface to manipulate geometric shapes and link them to make a variety of structures, such as a gallery space in which to show their work. Beaubois also finds it a good tool for showing students how building parts fit together. “During one class period, a student built a design and the other students went into the program to test it out,” he says. “They could instantly see where the trouble spots were, and it could be modified on the spot.”

Modeling programs like AutoDesk’s Revit and 3ds Max have helped to bring architecture into the virtual realm. Google’s recent acquisition of SketchUp suggests that more companies will become interested in these tools as they become more central to architects’ business. John Bacus, a Boulder, Colorado–based product manager at SketchUp, says it’s hard to keep up with all of the projects and modeling of real cities being loaded into Google Earth. “We don’t edit the models in any way,” Bacus says. “They can be loaded anonymously and anyone can review and rate them.”

Bacus says you can load multiple versions of a building intended for a single site. The public could then vote on the best version. “The public tends to trust 3D models more than a simple rendering,”

he says. As the world of virtual architecture develops, we may see architects lead clients on tours through a 3D-modeled Google Earth with a view of the firm’s buildings. In Second Life, multinational firms could create meeting rooms to foster interoffice collaboration. Already in Second Life, virtual lectures have attracted architects from all over the world.

ADVERTISEMENT