Day 6: Building

One of the key elements of Second life living for me as a resident is how I spend my time. The activities one has and the friends who share similar interests are for the me the embodiment of the pleasure of virtual living.

I was very lucky to meet Toby for a number of other reasons besides the obvious romantic interest.

He is a builder and a scriptwriter as well as an excellent mathematician (those of you who know the relevance of this know how vital that is here).
I didn't know this of course when I first met him, I was just drawn to a conversation he was having with one of the guests in Tobys Juke Joint and something about that made me want to know him better.

I might return to this particular fascinating topic in a future post but the relevance for today is that Toby and I have started, along with our artistic aspirations, to work as a building team.

Ah I hear you ask....What is your role in this Dearest when Toby clearly has so many skills?

The answer is simple, I am a lowly designer, I see what it is I would like to create, but without Toby, it would stay as an image on a page. Alone I am impotent but thanks to Toby I now have a voice

Since we started building we have created five buildings, four of which are residential, and, two swimming pools, one of which, the Silver Lining Pool, I showed you in my very first post.

In this post I plan to present a little of our design and building ethos and underpinning philosophy and to to show you the four houses we have jointly produced to date.

 Work is currently in progress on our current build in our studio.

The first house we jointly designed was Jade House (above), named for the snake logo a dear friend gave me which later became the inspiration for our sim, Jade Snake Island.

This house was really a development of an open plan house idea we both liked which we refined and  infused with Art Deco motifs.

It is here that we began to articulate the drivers of our philosphy of SL architectural design.
Despite the assumptions of many residents to the contrary, there is no automatic transfer of RL living needs to SL. There is no eating here and no need to shower or bathe. Similarly there is no issue regarding temperature whatever the season. Finally, the construction materials behave extremely differently and operate under the laws of mathe alone, not mathes, science and physics.
 This means that the types of houses we design to live in in SL are actually very different to those that people live in in RL because the needs of the inhabitants are different.

In Jade house we have added the opaque option to the upstairs level so that there is an additional private space for the home owners personal use.

Our second build was the Roundhouse, an absolute challenge when I discovered that there is no such thing as a circle in SL. I was determined to be circular but it is really the decahedron house!

We have also  identified the the provision for a personal and  private space need not necessarily be a bedroom although often it serves as one.

As well as space and light we also feel that privacy is an important element of SL living so here we developed our click and hold action  for opening and closing curtains so that spaces can be entirely closed to the outside world.

Each curtain can be opened or closed by a click and hold action



Our next build, Colonnade includes these features as standard.

We have created the rooms around a large central airy space, that is ideal for entertainment.

Each of the five rooms can be closed off privately using a click and hold curtain. The curtain has permanent open swags with an optional tapestry inner layer.

We also feel that it is very important to have some outside space in which to relax and enjoy possible views so we included a roof garden with changable textures

The most recent version of Colonnade has a swimming pool in the central area.

This can be concealed at the flick of a switch enabling the space to be used for dancing or some other activity requiring space.

Our most recent build is also a skybox with the option of being suitable for  land or sky use.
Silver Lining Skybox is typical of the way we are building currently inasmuch as all the textures and components are original and designed and  made by ourselves.

Now the obligatory pool takes up a whole floor of its own with the opportunity to invite large numbers of friends to swim  with you in its ample proportions.

The first floor has a huge  central entertaining space featuring the famous Rennie MacIntosh Doors from the Willow Tea Rooms.

 

The three pairs of  beautiful double doors give way to a bedroom, living room and a bathroom to die for

And, of course, the ubiquitous roof garden............

I think I will conclude by mentioning the fact that Toby has an extensive portfolio of previous builds, and, althought these may be described as more traditional in approach, they are still very popular and demonstrate the origins of the  incredible attention to detail which marks our joint projects.

I will devote a post to each new build going forwards, in the meantime we love meeting our customers or just people like us who love to create and who like to view the designs of others.

You can find us and our work at ArchiTech's Marketplace:-

http://slurl.com/secondlife/gavrinis/48/128/1041