Linden Labs, creator of Second Life, has awarded a Linden Prize to Studio Wikitecture for their WikiTree project. The online collaboration uses the virtual world "to harness a groups collective intelligence in designing architecture."
"To help aggregate the contributions of such a disparate range of individuals, we developed what could best be described as a 3D-Wiki plugin for Second Life. The Wiki-Tree, as we called it, worked very much like a conventional Wiki, but instead of tracking text documents in a linear history, this 3D-Wiki tracked versions of digital models and saved them within a continually evolving 3-dimensional collective 'mind map'.
When a contributor used the inworld interface to upload their design iteration, a new leaf grew out of the existing 'Canopy'. For every leaf created inworld, a corresponding section was also created on an external website. Besides storing the individual design iterations, the 3-dimensional Canopy was able to visually convey how the different ideas, submitted by different contributors, grew and evolved from on another. Popular designs in the canopy turned green, and the less popular designs turned red and were automatically pruned.
To review the various designs, members could simply click the individual 'leaves' and the design contained within would rez itself out on the parcel. Members were also able to upload snapshots, vote and comment on their fellow contributor's designs."
Read the full story: Studio Wikitecture: Open Architecture Challenge
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