First Annual Architecture and Design Competition in Second Life

Topic of the Competition:
Seeking the coolest, most spatially interesting and aesthetically independent pieces of architecture from the inhabitants of Second Life. It can include all buildings: from big to small, spaceships, underwater constructions, villas, fully landscaped and designed islands, complex high rises. Decisive are creativity, innovation, features, style, and spatial qualities.

Goal of the Competition:
The competition should create a large public forum in the real world for all architects and designers who have made exceptionally innovative and artistic creations in Second Life.

Participation Limits:
There are no limits for participation

Jury:
A highly qualified, independent jury of designers and architects will award prizes to pieces of architecture from residents in Second Life. A detailed list of jury members will follow in the course of the project.

Deadline:
September 1st, 2007

Background:
Computer games have stopped copying the world, and instead the world seems now to function more and more like a computer game. The aesthetic and cultural consequences seem to put the old question of the utopia in architecture in a new light. This light consists of pixels, yearning and fantasy. While in the real world architectural utopias play only a small role, the digital worlds of computer games, including Second Life, have become the actual venue for this (and other) utopias. Freed from practical necessities and economic and technical obligations, a new architecture has established itself that will not remain inconsequential for the real world.

What matters in Second Life is the architectural function of the building. Even if one cannot enter them, like the CAD renderings, in a physical way, the communication happens on many levels: aesthetic, linguistic, musical, and finally with virtual buildings, which one could also call walk-in plastic sculptures. This alone is something that real architecture sometimes can’t achieve any more. Here, “architecture happens” and creates in this way, as contradictory as it may seem, “real places.” Only through the “beyond human” ph ysicality in Second Life – one can even fly as an avatar or teleport oneself – are new spatial connections made. The exciting question is:

Which relation does the real architecture (-culture) have to this development and vice versa – on all levels?

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