For those of you fascinated by the prospect of architecture/building practice in the virtual world

Second Life's population problems - Computerworld Blogs



This blog puts some of the hype about second life into perspective.It's clear that this community that I found gets very boring very quickly is only used by a small number of people. (57,000+ does not seem small, until one thinks about the total number of people who the hype suggest might be 'users'.



What I found most interesting about the blog was not the second life stats but the suggestion that 84 million Americans have home broadband and of these more than 5 million a day are taking tours in virtual space....

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'Hero' architect builds green - but is it different?

TOWERING EXPECTATIONS / S.F.'s new federal building challenges ideas of what a government high-rise should look like -- its humane design is green, dazzling One of the interesting architectural design questions people have tackled over the last 30 years has been the idea that green buildings might define a new aesthetic.

Back in the late 70's, the question was would a passive solar non-residential building define a new aesthetic. There was even some speculation about the inclusion of some of our other senses in the definition of aesthetics. Could a definition of the spiritual values of a welcoming warmth in winter and 'coolth' in summer; a calm quietness; become a new aesthetic?

Now, however we have a corporate architecture that is allegedly more comfortable because it is naturally lit and naturally ventilated. However, looking at the illustrations, I wonder whether the future of this brave new idea is to be similar to the critical acclaim / popular opprobrium of that wonder of mid last century the new brutalism...?

Architectural Record News | At Long Last, Museum for African Art Finds a Place to Call Its Own

Architectural Record News | At Long Last, Museum for African Art Finds a Place to Call Its Own - another museum to model? A Robert Stern design. In Manhattan. Illustration on this web site looks potentially interesting. Risks being a corporate clone dog's breakfast because it incorporates "116 housing units on top...".

Animation class Lecture 2

The lecture on Monday covered some of the basics of film making. Ignoring these principles make animations about buildings very much exercise in non-communication. I presented a pre-cursor of the whole course by introducing the classic film maker's handbook: The Five C's of Cinematography'.

My suggestion is that understanding these principles will significantly alter what people want to render/represent and hence will alter how / what they animate. In the 403 course we are examining the notion that the Scene (the building(s) can be the Actors, rather than the backdrop...the scenery.

We watched

• an extract from Lawrence of Arabia - focusing on Omar Sharif and the interminable ride out of the desert to meet Lawrence that is, as I understand it his first Western feature
  
• a 'teaser' from a Walt Disney - Disneyland - presentation of the 'Plausible Impossible" - preparing people to answer the question that will be posed next Monday: find your own example(s) of plausibly impossible acts in movies
• a 30 minute doco on the Satolas station near Lyon by Calatrava - what works and does not work; what genres are being accepted by us when we understand the content of the doco
  
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