Second Night: the architecture

Although Second life is a virtual world, not obeying to the same principles of the real one, a huge amount of his architectural production is strongly inspired or just imitating the real world model. The most important spatial issue seems to be the need to amaze the public with (often tasteless) over-decoration.


In opposition to this tendency I wanted to build something simple, and to design a structure that could only make sense in Second Life.


As in real life, the terrain price in SL is expensive: it makes sense to go vertical. I therefore decided to build a tower composed of ten irregularly superposed levels.


On each level I placed few freely positioned parallelepipeds, with the only function of delimiting the exposition space and reducing the risk of falling down.


Each floor was made of translucent material, so that it was possible to discern in real time what was happening on the level beneath or above. This effect was particularly spectacular when the exposition was invaded by a crowd of avatars.


The building was not provided with stairs: in addition to the option to fly, always possible in SL, the vertical circulation was provided by teleport buttons allowing jumping from a level to another.


Most important of all, the design had to be almost imperceptible, in order to give value to the exposition’s primary material, the art works.


The result was a stack of floors and a scatter of colourful parapets, seeming to precariously obey to some statics law, but actually made possible only thanks to the Second Life unconventional interpretation of the gravity principle.
In the SL forums, the spatial concept of the exposition was either quoted with exaggerated honours or aggressive critics. I am evidently glad of the positive reactions and I will take note of the negative ones for improving my next designs.


Finally, I would like to mention an architect and artist that, since a long time, is designing virtual architecture on Second Life: Andreas Angelidakis.
He participated to the Second Night exhibition, giving a remarkable lecture of his experience of persistent worlds. His “Cloud House” was the cherry on the top of the building…