Open Source White House Redux

Digital Urban is reporting on White House Redux, a collaborative architecture project that seeks to collectively redesign the White House in Washington, D.C.

From the project website:  Analogously, the concept of Source Code is readily found in the everyday practice of architecture in forms of drawings, agendas, documentations, ideas, specifications, and material libraries. However, none of the above, with the seldom exception of ‘ideas’, are freely redistributable, publicized, or allow for criticism and input akin to what an open-source model offers. The architectural practice, today, is skewed towards personal benefit and gratification of individual architects. Thus, the laws protect creative property, on one hand, but are constricting and oppose collaborative creativity that could contribute more rapidly to architectural theory and practice.

Read about another collaborative architecture project taking place in Second Life here and here.

And for more, see the Open Architecture Network as well as the Library Design Wiki.

Posted by Chris

New visualization engine for architects

This new architectural visualization engine by Softmirage is super impressive.

Check out many more demo reels at the Digital Urban Blog. And see older engines here and here.

Posted by Chris

Princeton Goes Virtual

Becoming the latest academic institution to join in the Second Life craze, Princeton University has begun the construction of a virtual campus from which it plans on offering classroom sessions and writing seminars for the Schools of Architecture and Visual Arts. The campus will open to Second Life residents in September, but you can check out a brief tour and a collection of photos at Ambling in Second Life.

“…Behind you as you arrive is a simulation of Chancellor Green Student Center, which was originally the college library building and dates from the 1870s. It reeks of Victorian Gothic. Inside is a library (surprise!), which the college plans to build into a Second Life-based online resource, together with a couple of informal meeting rooms that would house around 6 people.”

More information on art and architecture in Second Life here and here.

Posted by Chris

“The Eternal City”

Rome Reborn project / AP

The recently unveiled Rome Reborn project, developed by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, has digitally recreated Rome as it is thought to have looked at the peak of its power in 320 AD.

Designers hope to make the whole 3-Dimensional simulation available in about a year, but a limited sample of the project can be viewed here. Read more about virtual reality projects by clicking on ‘virtual reality’ in the tag cloud, which is found along the right side of this page, underneath recent posts.

Explore Rome and all its glory, with just a click Tracy Wilkinson, LA Times June 16, 2007

“Using historic maps, laser scans of Roman structures as they are today and the expertise of archeologists, artists and architects from Europe and the U.S., the creators of Rome Reborn have simulated 7,000 buildings and 31 monuments, including the Colosseum and others that are in ruins, such as the Temple of Venus and the Roman Senate.”

Posted by: Chris

Google Earth and AIA

The American Institute of Architects and Google have partnered to add a new level of virtual reality to the Google Earth engine. One of these videos has no sound and the other is pretty cheesy. Watch them at the same time if you can.

Related: Sounds bring Google Earth to life. Plus more on the favorite architecture poll here.

Posted by Chris

The Art World of Second Life

Reuter’s Second Life correspondent Rubina Reuters (aka Rubina Madan) weighs the pros and cons of being an artist in the Second Life virtual world.

Artists struggle but don’t starve in Second Life Rubina Reuters Rueters 4/13/07

“Dancoyote Antonelli (whose real-life name is DC Spensley) pioneered hyperformalism – an art movement that creates abstract art in the digital world.”

“‘I have been creating digital work for nearly two decades on faith that something like Second Life would appear as a proper forum for the work,’ Antonelli said in an interview at his Second Life gallery. ‘The Web, like TV, makes all things flat, equally null. … In SL, it is magically transformed into the fine art it was intended to be.'”

Visit Spensley’s museum of hyperformalism here. And more here from SLART, a critical review and journal of the arts in Second Life.

Plus, read how Paris residents are using Second Life to redesign a central area of the city here. And more on collaborative architecture in Second Life in this old post.

Posted by Chris

The Guggenheim Virtual Museum

image: Asymptote Architects

Via arcspace.com: “The Guggenheim Virtual Museum will not only provide global access to all Guggenheim Museums and their services, amenities, archives, and collections but will also provide a unique and compelling spatial environment to be experienced by the virtual visitor.”

Read more about the upcoming museum here and here. And check out Asymptote’s official website with some videos of the museum here.

And read more about virtual architecture in this previous post.

Posted by: Chris

Virtual Architecture

The NYSE’s virtual reality trading floor, designed by New York based Asymptote Architecture, is the first large-scale virtual reality environment used for business purposes. See more of the firm’s innovative projects, both virtual and non-virtual, here and here.

Via arcspace.com: “The work of Asymptote includes architectural design at all scales: furniture, interior, building and urban design but also extends beyond these into the realms of digital environments and installations…The Virtual Trading Floor for the New York Stock Exchange and the Guggenheim Virtual Museum are fully navigable interactive multi-dimensional architectural environments.”

And read more about the concepts of virtual reality and the metaverse, and recent plans to build a virtual reality network independent of the internet, here.

Posted by: Chris Z

Architecture Visualization Engine

Check out these videos of a new visualization engine made possible through the partnership of Imagtp, a communication agency for architecture and urban planning and Crytek, a video game company. The CryEngine 2’s application to architecture was showcased at this year’s Imagina conference in Monaco. Read more HERE.

From the conference presentation: “Imagine a 3D computerized model which can carry on and integrate the successive evolutions of your project, being a decision making tool as well as a public communication support and allowing an easy and full understanding of the project and its stakes. All that is now possible thanks to the unique possibilities coming from the videogame world.”

SLART

SLART: a critical review and journal of the arts in Second Life

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FIRST-RATE ART IN “SECOND LIFE” Ben Davis, Artnet News, Jan 23, 2007″Richard Minsky, an artist and founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City, is launching the first magazine dedicated exclusively to the art scene in the burgeoning online universe of Second Life. Dubbed Slart — as in Second Life Art — the publication is designed to bring ‘real world art issues’ into the virtual sphere, and to make sense of an imaginary art scene that already involves some 100 online galleries. Among the articles on tap for the premiere issue are ‘Will virtual artworks appreciate in value?’ and ‘Is all virtual art illustration?'”

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The Book Art of Richard Minsky website.

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Article: Arts Library acquires the archive of pioneering book artist Richard Minsky Yale Bulletin, December 17, 2004