Week 1

Introduction

Welcome to Unit 6 - Architectural Design and Virtual Worlds. This unit will form the principal basis of your design activity for the Autumn term.

The project will involve developing design ideas in the virtual world of Second Life in response to a brief from a real client who wishes to construct a presence there.

This website will be the hub of your activity. You will find details of the brief and a foundation of resources to get you started. A timeline and regularly updated information that will take you through each week's activities and allow you to plan your work are accessable from the menu on the right of each page.

Research in Second Life

This week you will begin a short research task in Second Life designed to get you to identify the characteristics of the environment and the nature of the structures within it.

You are required to visit locations in Second Life and take snapshots of builds which you find interesting. Upload the images to your flickr account and then add them to the course's flickr group.

Each student should pick a build from the group of images (it doesn't have to be the one you added to the group) and start a discussion thread in the flickr group explaining why you've picked that one. View the other threads and post your comments to at least five other threads.

You should be looking for structures in Second Life that are good examples of the exploitation of the artefacts of the virtual environment and innovative solutions to client needs. You might also want to look for some bad examples of the same.

Diary

Monday

11.00 - Project briefing in the studio

Thursday

11.00 - Meet with the client and begin working on the biref in your groups

Friday

10.00 - Briefing for mini research project