Second Life Critiques     Law --   Your building looks great and I think it really communicates your idea for a campus well. The main thing I would work on at this point is integrating your text into your project. Your thincbook works well enough, but the text is very small and difficult to read. Is there some way you could use “blackboards” like you did for your introduction to put the important parts of your paper around your building? I’m afraid that might detract from the clean, glass look you have going on. Instead, could you make use of the space inside of your building? Though on the one hand I like how transparent and empty your building is, I think you could definitely use the inside to help communicate the textual part of your project. And the “blackboards” worked really well for that -- they looked clean, which goes along with the style you’re proposing, but they also were very easy to read. Also, do the glass triangles around your building serve some purpose that I’m missing? Right now they seem a little extraneous.   I think you’ve got the visual part of your project down, just work on blending your text into that. Well done!   Liz --   I think your building is one of my favorites, because it’s so elegant and clean! I especially like the way you combined circular and geometric forms, which makes the feeling of your building much more human and less sterile floating box. I have no major suggestions about your project, because everything was easy to interact with and well organized. These are just a few things that came to mind while I was walking around.   I agree with a few of Garrison’s points. I think your second building could be unnecessary, and it seems that putting the thincbook into your first building would better integrate the text into your Second Life project, as well as fill up the space in the first building. It sounds silly to say that by moving the book from outside to inside your building will give your project a better feeling of connection, but I think it really will help your project feel less like a collection of a few individual objects and more like a more unified whole.   I think another reason I feel right now that your project would be stronger with just one building is because of the contrast between the two. Your first building is just, at this point, so much more interesting! Given your abilities in SL, I’m sure you can make the other one more visually-appealing too -- perhaps with something as simple as adding a texture to the outside or something more difficult like adding more columns and working on the inside space of your building. The combination of two buildings, thincbook, and a walkway also felt a little bit cluttered to me, and I always associate Postmodernism with very clean, well defined spaces. Perhaps it would better reflect that style to simplify your composition?   Something else, and this is mostly just out of curiosity because it looks perfectly fine without it, but do you plan to add roofs to your buildings? Also, what are the things you started building on the top of your first building? Great work and I’m excited to see where you go next!   Trevor --   Your building is definitely eye-catching, and I really like the direction in which you’re going with it. Here are a few ideas for ways you could develop it:   -- Your project seems to represent post-modernism, but it’s hard to tell what the structure itself is. As most everyone has said, I think it would add a lot if we were able to go inside the building and experience it in that way. Could you use the same fluid, non-geometric forms that you have currently to create a sort of inner space?   -- Perhaps, in following suit with the architectural style of your building, you can come up with an unconventional way of integrating your text into the design of your building. Maybe use images of other buildings designed in a similar style as textures for the inside of your building, or distribute the images around the space in an interesting way.   An interesting start and I’m curious to see how you develop it!   Brad --   The look of your project sparked my curiosity and I enjoyed the interactive nature of it. However, I wasn’t able to read any of your notes! It would help a lot if you could explain your ideas as you went up the stairs, because if someone hasn’t read your paper and without the notes, it’s very difficult to get any sort of meaning from your project. I also agree with many of the others in that a Second Life representation of the type of building style you’re proposing would really help me get a sense of what you’re proposing. I like the structure you have now, but a physical manifestation of those ideas would make your ideas very clear.   Another thing -- like Eric said, the stair-step design of your project, while interesting, eventually became frustrating. Could you add a walk way or another way to make it easier for the less eye-mouse coordinated of us?   Overall, a very original interpretation of the project   Rachel --   I was really impressed by the sense of space your building was able to create!   Besides bringing in the other two styles of architecture you mentioned in your paper, I think one of the most helpful things you could do is working on blending your text and visuals. If you could make the integration of verbal and visual rhetoric more cohesive -- which I know is a lot easier to say than to do -- I think it would add a lot to your project. Perhaps something similar to what Garrison did with the captions for his pictures could be useful for your project? Right now the two seem very separate, with all of the visual concentrated in Second Life and most of the text out on your website.   And as other people like Liz have already mentioned, though I really enjoy the space your building creates, it’s a little bit difficult for me to visual it as an aspect of a campus instead of a structure in a park, for example. Is there a way you could make it seem more like a classroom or give it an educational feeling?   Overall, nicely done.   Eric --   I liked that you used an image from the Blanton museum as your texture -- I think it works really well. I didn’t notice anything major that I would change about your project, but here are a few detail suggestions.   Textures were the main thing. -- Perhaps put a texture on the columns (which I liked a lot, by the way) and on the inside of your building, as white looks a bit unnatural   -- Alex mentioned this before, but using the same texture for the roof above the columns and the roof on your building will make the entire thing look more unified.   -- Your thincbook looked great, and I really liked the image on the front, but I had trouble reading the text. Could you either make the text or your thincbook itself larger? Or could you incorporate your verbal rhetoric in another way?   Overall, good job!   Garrison --   First of all, I think your idea of using images inside the building is really great! I think they give the viewer a much clearer idea of the style you’re arguing for and so help to really reinforce your idea.   I also thought the captions on your pictures were very effective, and like a few people have said already, I think it would work really well if you incorporated parts of your paper in a similar way. Yours is the smoothest integration of text into Second Life that I’ve seen so far, so great job on that!   But, since critiques are all about suggestions, here are a few areas where I think you could make your presentation stronger:   -- The texture on the outside of your building, though a good quality photo and appropriate for your style, has some hard edges where the pictures meet. Perhaps use a section of the photo and then tile it. Another thing along the same lines, and I know this is a lot harder to do than just to say, but if there were a way to make your building look more like a unified whole rather than a collection of parts, I think your building would right away look a lot better. Things like making sure there is a unified texture across the various surfaces and lining the roof and walls up straight could help.   -- I also agree with Mauro. If it’s not too difficult, add some windows!   So, you’ve used some very effective and original ideas, and after tweaking a few things, you’ll have a great(er) project!   Amanda --   Like everyone else, I really liked that you set up your project as a collection of items and I think it communicates your ideas well.   -- However, I think to really get your point across, you might want to have one of the buildings in your collection be a representative of Beaux-Arts architecture. If I remember, you said in your paper that the Tower can be considered Beaux-Arts, and you do have a model of the Tower, but if you could create something very distinctively Beaux-Arts, it might be easier to envision your campus. It just seems like the Tower might be a hard, somewhat unclear example to use because it is so much part of the general style of architecture at UT that many people associate it more closely with a Mediterranean or perhaps Neo-Classical style.   -- I think it also might be helpful to arrange your objects in a way that creates a greater sense of unity. As other people mentioned, something as simple as a path could make your buildings feel like part of a whole instead of individual objects. I also thought Mauro’s idea of organizing the objects inside a building could work well. Basically any way of pulling your objects together would add a lot I think.   So those are the two main things I would suggest changing, but you definitely have a good project to expand -- if you want to.   Oh, and I wasn’t able to access your notes or images! It saddened me.   Chetna –   First of all, I admire you for working with a style that’s hard to replicate simply by using boxes like most of the rest of us can! And I know yours is a work in progress, so these are just suggestions for things you could do.   -- We all seem to be having problems visualizing a campus in this style given what you have right now. Ideally, I think a building, instead of a collection of objects, done in Vedic style would best and most clearly convey your idea. I know Second Life is hard to work with, and Vedic architecture is complicated, but if you could figure out a way to create a building, I think it would increase the effectiveness of your SL creation immensely!   -- If a building in Vedic style proves too time-consuming or difficult (and believe me, I can understand how it would be!), creating plaques, as many people have mentioned, for your objects would also help to convey a clearer idea of your master plan. Incorporating more images of Vedic buildings among your objects would make it much more obvious. Maybe you can construct a “campus” using images of Vedic buildings on flat objects or cubes?   So those are a few ideas!