The growth of internet based communication has facilitated the development of open source, collaborative projects. Here we describe the results of three 'Wikitecture' experiments in collaborative, open source architectural design within the virtual world Second Life. We describe the in-world platform developed and its use for a design competition entry. Issues such as contribution assessment and the role of open source collaborative design in architecture and construction are discussed, concluding with a wish list for future enhancements

Brouchoud, Jon

Chase, Scott

Schultz, Ryan

English

Name not available

Gather round the wiki-tree : virtual worlds as an open platform for architectural collaboration

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

Strathprints Institutional RepositoryChase, Scott and Schultz, Ryan and Brouchoud, Jon (2008) Gather round the wiki-tree : virtual worlds as an open platform for architectural collaboration. In: ARCHITECTURE 'in computro'. eCAADe, Antwerp, pp. 809-815. ISBN 9780954118372 , This version is available at http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/13671/Strathprints is  designed  to  allow  users  to  access  the  research  output  of  the  University  of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may  not  engage  in  further  distribution  of  the  material  for  any  profitmaking  activities  or  any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Any  correspondence  concerning  this  service  should  be  sent  to  Strathprints  administrator: strathprints@strath.ac.uk  eCAADe 26 809-Section 20: Collaborative Design 3Gather ’round the Wiki-TreeVirtual Worlds as an Open Platform for Architectural CollaborationScott Chase 1, Ryan Schultz 2, Jon Brouchoud 31 University of Strathclyde, 2-3 Studio Wikitecture1 http://personal.strath.ac.uk/s.c.chase, 2-3 http://studiowikitecture.com1 s.c.chase@strath.ac.uk, 2 ryan.schultz@studiowikitecture.com, 3 jbrouchoud@gmail.comAbstract. The growth of internet based communication has facilitated the development of open source, collaborative projects. Here we describe the results of three Wikitecture experiments in collaborative, open source architectural design within the virtual world Second Life. We describe the in-world platform developed and its use for a design competition entry. Issues such as contribution assessment and the role of open source collaborative design in architecture and construction are discussed, concluding with a wish list for future enhancements.Keywords: Virtual worlds; wikis; open source architecture; collaborative design.IntroductionWith the network efects of the digital age, combined with the principles of non-exclusive, ‘copyleft’ licens-ing, the world is starting to see the beginnings of a more decentralised method of production—a meth-od producing a surge in innovation and creativity not seen since the advent of the industrial revolution (Lessig, 2001). Projects such as Wikipedia and open-source software demonstrate how a loose and de-centralised group of individuals can come together in a more bottom-up fashion and create something greater than the sum of its parts. Amazon’s Mechani-cal Turk service (www.mturk.com: June 2008) facili-tates the outsourcing of small ‘human intelligence tasks’. Companies such as Crowdspirit (www.crowd-spirit.com: June 2008) are demonstrating that an ‘open source’ method of production can be applied to physical products as well as information goods (Tapscott and Williams, 2007, pp 214-238).How can these decentralised approaches be harnessed to improve the quality of architecture and urban planning throughout the world? To answer this question, we have been conducting ‘Wikitecture’ experiments in the virtual world Second Life (sec-ondlife.com: June 2008) to determine what proce-dures and protocols might be necessary to practice a more open and distributed approach to architectural design. In the past, virtual worlds were not seriously considered for design collaboration, as their building tools tend to pale in comparison to those incorpo-rated into ‘traditional’ collaborative design tools such as Building Information Modelling systems (Conti et al., 2003). More recent work, however, does investi-gate a discipline based approach to collaborative design in virtual worlds (Rosenman et al., 2006; Gu and Tsai, 2008). We believe that because of its pow-erful networking capabilities, Second Life is an ex-cellent platform for exploring how an open source approach to architectural practice might operate. Chase S, Schultz R, Brouchoud J, 2008, "Gather 'round the Wiki-Tree: Virtual Worlds as an Open Platform for Architectural Collaboration", in ARCHITECTURE 'in computro': Integrating methods and techniques, Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Education in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe Ed M Muylle (eCAADe, Antwerp) 809-815     ISBN 978-0-9541183-7-2 810 eCAADe 26 - Section 20: Collaborative Design 3Here we describe what we have learned from three Wikitecture experiments.Wikitecture experimentsWikitecture 1.0The irst experiment involved a number of people who came together to design a small meeting ki-osk. Wikitecture 1.0 was not really a true wiki in the sense that contributors could not modify or delete the contributions of others. What resulted, although interesting in its own right, was an amalgamation of ‘stuf’ with no overall coherency or unity—a result we expected (Fig. 1).Wikitecture 2.0In the second experiment the group designed a courtyard building for in-world group meetings (Fig. 2). Unlike the irst one, members were able to modify or delete other contributors’ designs. To facilitate communication, contributors uploaded descriptive snapshots of their designs to a photo-sharing website and were able to leave feedback on others’ designs. A rudimentary archiving system was introduced, which allowed members (through community consensus) to roll back the ‘live’ design to previously saved iterations. As a result of these enhancements, the inal design was far more uniied and coherent than Wikitecture 1.0.One aspect of these experiments was to devel-op a system in which individual ownership in and contribution to the collaboratively authored design could be determined. We developed a simple system in which all contributors were asked to assess what percentage they feel they had contributed to the de-sign as well as what percentage they feel others had contributed. When all assessments are averaged, a simple but generally reasonable judgment can be made to how much (compensation, ownership, IP rights, etc) should be allocated to each contributor. This system was used in Wikitecture 2.0 and 3.0 (Fig. 3).Wikitecture 3.0The third experiment involved the design of a clinic for Nyaya Health, a community-based healthcare organisation based in one of the poorer regions in western Nepal, set as one of three concurrent com-petition projects sponsored by the Open Architec-ture Network (OAN, openarchitecturenetwork.org/challenge: June 2008). Since the Network’s mission concerns open sourcing architecture for humani-tarian purposes, we thought it would be a good Figure 1 Wikitecture 1.0 designFigure 2 Wikitecture 2.0 meeting with-in the in-progress designFigure 3 Contribution assessment calculation (Wikitecture 3.0).Columns represent contribu-tors, rows are voters.  eCAADe 26 811-Section 20: Collaborative Design 3opportunity to submit an entry for this competi-tion, composed in the same collaborative and open source fashion. The Wikitecture community worked on the competition over a 3½ month period during winter 2007-08. Our entry won third place in its com-petition and the overall Founder’s Award for ‘embrac-ing a truly collaborative way of working using online crowd sourcing and Second Life as a way to create a highly participatory design approach’ (www.openar-chitecturenetwork.org/challenge/pressrelease: June 2008).For this experiment, we wanted to go beyond just mashing up existing technologies and actually develop a unique Wikitecture platform. Based on the results of the previous experiments, we decided to collaborate with software designers from i3D Inc. (www.i3dnow.com: June 2008) and thus developed an in-world interface, in essence a 3D Wiki. An exter-nal website was also created to allow real time com-munication with the in-world interface (Fig. 4).In-world interfaceThe current in-world interface consists of two major components, a ‘wiki-tree’ and a ‘viewing kiosk’. The wiki-tree is comprised of a ‘tree-trunk’ and a ‘canopy’ of colored spheres hanging above it (Fig. 5). A stan-dard menu of geometric objects with which to build is available from the wiki-tree’s trunk (Fig. 6). Each geometric object has an embedded script that al-lows it to communicate with the wiki-tree.An individual design can be submitted to the tree at any time. Above the tree sits a canopy of leaf Figure 4 Wikitecture 3.0 web forum feedback pageFigure 5 Wiki tree canopy.812 eCAADe 26 - Section 20: Collaborative Design 3spheres, each containing a diferent design submis-sion. The canopy visually conveys the evolution of the designs. For example, the animation ‘shooting’ between two ‘leaves’ indicates how one design was derived from another. Thus, by viewing the canopy holistically, one can quickly assess the evolutionary history of the design. The leaves derive their color from their popular-ity in the community. Visitors can use the tree or the corresponding web interface to cast three positive and three negative votes. Popular designs are bright green, unpopular ones are red, with those in the middle ranks rendered in intermediate colours. As the canopy grows, the tree periodically prunes itself of the lowest ranked designs, leaving only the most popular ones as options for further reinement.When designs are submitted, the tree commu-nicates with the web interface, which automatically creates a corresponding area on the website where designers can upload snapshots and descriptions of their ideas. The website provides an additional way for members of the community to vote on the design and leave their own comments, thus expanding the community to include those who cannot or choose not to access Second Life.Two parcels of land in-world are available for the design team: the irst, a ‘build’ parcel which allows one to work on a design in preparation for submis-sion to the wiki-tree; the second, a ‘viewing’ parcel to view designs stored within the wiki-tree. This allows one to simultaneously view, walk through and thus compare two designs (Fig. 7).To augment the experience of actually occupy-ing the space, the three screens in the viewing kiosk near the wiki-tree allow users to cycle through the snapshots and comments associated with the ac-tive design on the viewing parcel as well. This view-ing kiosk is especially helpful for those who wish to communicate their designs informally with a smaller Figure 6 Wiki tree trunk showing interface with geometric primitives.Figure 7 Wikitecture 3.0 in world de-sign meeting on the viewing parcel, with viewing kiosk and wiki tree on the right.  eCAADe 26 813-Section 20: Collaborative Design 3group of individuals.OAN competition design processWith this technology, we were able to focus a very di-verse range of ideas into a naturally evolving process ranging from comprehensive text-based research to 2D plan diagrams, then into immersive 3D virtual models designed and built on a replica of the project site.The irst ideas submitted were simple 2D dia-grams showing proposed arrangements of func-tions. Some ideas were studies of the architectural vernacular of the region. Others proposed concepts such as expandability and resilience. Contributions also contained extensive written documentation of material options. One community member sub-mitted several hand-sketched layouts; another ex-tracted the most popular layout into a 3D diagram. The concept evolved from 2D sketch into a more comprehensive 3D model, based on collaborative research on material options, sustainability and seis-mic considerations.Halfway through the design process the compe-tition organisers changed the site and design brief. With new information provided by Nyaya Health and the OAN team’s site visit, the community quickly shifted gears. One contributor modeled the new site; another submitted new sketch diagrams on the cor-responding website forum. Despite these site and program changes, most of our cultural, regional and material research still applied.In total, our design community consisted of over 40 members (about half whom had architec-tural backgrounds) who submitted over 50 diferent design contributions, left 67 comments, uploaded 92 images and placed over 200 votes. There was a tremendous variance in people’s contributions. As with any open source project, some people were diehards, constantly making suggestions and tweak-ing the design, but the majority of participants made only one or two contributions throughout the entire design process. Ironically, the ideas from these in-frequent contributors had the most impact on the overall theme of the inal design.The design submitted (Fig. 8) is only one point along a greater timeline. If our design had been se-lected, we would invite further input from Nyaya Health and the community of end users to inform the next phases of evolution toward an ideal solu-tion. The virtual replica we have developed would not disappear after the competition is complete, but could live on as an evolving virtual model of the real life site in Nepal, echoing each development and op-portunity as the project came to life. Though the real life site may be challenging to access, this mirror ren-dition of the project site could enable many people from around the world to experience the local site and conditions as it evolves, further expanding the outreach, awareness and support for this project to a global audience throughout its entire life cycle. Our entire design process has been collaborative and luid, and we have no illusions that we have reached the optimal trade-of among the many practical and aesthetic considerations. We can only achieve excel-lence by incorporating more local knowledge and experience into the design.Discussion Although this project was successful in many ways, there are a number of aspects we would like to im-prove for future work.Project modularisationOne way to improve a distributed, collaborative de-sign project is to establish protocols in which the de-sign itself can be subdivided into modules or chunks small enough to allow one to contribute to certain aspects of the project without requiring complete knowledge of the overall project. This modularity is a prerequisite for many successful crowdsourcing projects. We do recognise the challenges in divid-ing an architectural project in such a way that the assembled parts work harmoniously. By subdivid-ing the project, this also allows the community to more accurately assess individual aspects of a design 814 eCAADe 26 - Section 20: Collaborative Design 3rather than a total design scheme; thus, we hope to introduce more granularity in voting for future experiments.Contribution assessment schemeAlthough the simple assessment scheme suiced for our initial experiments, we plan to consider more robust methods as we move towards more ‘live’ proj-ects, amongst these, concepts such as fair division procedures (Brams, 2008).An initial attempt has thus far identiied three factors we would wish to incorporate into an en-hanced assessment scheme:One’s voting weight or potency should decrease 1. as the variance increases between one’s assess-ment and the community’s average assessment. For example if you ranked yourself as contribut-ing to 80% of the inal design, but your fellow contributors’ assessments averaged at 20%, your voting rank would decrease.The size of the fee for a particular project would 2. afect voting potency, e.g. the lower the fee for a project, the less one’s voting potency will change for the next round.The actual size of one’s contribution, e.g. the 3. smaller one’s average contribution percentage, the less one can change one’s voting potency.The second and third factors would be used to prevent members from gaming the system to artii-cially inlate their vote ranking, i.e. to attempt to in-crease one’s potency by either contributing to small projects and/or contributing very little. In this sense, the intellectual property or ownership is both inclu-sive (in that anyone can contribute and become part of the community) and exclusive (in that proits are distributed based on the community’s assessment of each individual’s contribution).These issues are fundamental to new economic models that mix open and closed licensing. The pur-suit of such models has been a signiicant issue for a number of crowdsourcing companies.Figure 8 Wikitecture 3.0 OAN competi-tion entry  eCAADe 26 815-Section 20: Collaborative Design 3The future of open source architecture net-worksAs ‘vast information technology arenas’ congeal into networks that are more open and transparent, the projects within these networks will also become more open and transparent. Changes we might po-tentially see include:Increased opportunities for less experienced ar-xchitects and smaller irms due to the potential to more easily outsource project components;Peer review of tendered bids, with an equitable xcompensation scheme for reviewers, precipi-tated by market pressures and the increasing importance of an integrated and decentralised model of project organisation;Alternative paths to professional registration, xincluding the possibility of graduated licensure based on qualiications;A more collaborative relationship between de-xsigners, manufacturers and other suppliers.SummaryWhat has been described here is an ongoing set of experiments in design collaboration still very much in a nascent state. A wish list of future enhancements includes: import/export of in-world designs to better CAD platforms and possibly other virtual worlds; the ability to store semantic data in the building model; streamlining of archival and communications meth-ods; a means of lagging speciic diferences be-tween designs; and, as described above, rigorous methods for contribution assessment and design modularisation.The use of an open design environment such as Second Life in conjunction with an open source ap-proach to design through initiatives such as the Open Architecture Network allows individuals increased opportunity to self-select and self-organise around projects that interest them most, with increased beneits of creativity, motivation, and lexibility, re-sulting in an altogether more eicient process.AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank all of the Wikitecture de-sign collaborators over the course of the three exper-iments; the software designers from i3D Inc. for the development of the wiki-tree interface; and Kirsten Kiser from Arcspace (www.arcspace.com: June 2008) for generously donating a large part of her Second Life island for the Wikitecture 3.0 site.ReferencesBrams, S. J.: 2008, Mathematics and Democracy: De-signing Better Voting and Fair-Division Procedures, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.Conti, G., Ucelli, G. and De Amicis, R.: 2003, JCAD-VR – a multi-user virtual reality design system for concep-tual design, TOPICS, Reports of the INI-GraphicsNet, (15), pp. 7-9.Gu, N. and Tsai, J. J.-H.: 2008, An Interactive Graphical System for Collaborative Architectural Design, in 3D Virtual Environments, in W. Nakapan, E. Mahaek, K. Teeraparbwong and P. Nilkaew (eds.), CAADRIA 2008: Beyond Computer Aided Design, Pimniyom Press, Chiang Mai, Thailand, pp. 601-608.Lessig, L.: 2001, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Com-mons in a Connected World, Random House, New York.Rosenman, M., Merrick, K., Maher, M. L. and Marchant, D.: 2006, DESIGNWORLD: A Multidisciplinary Col-laborative Design Environment Using Agents in a Virtual World, in J. S. Gero (ed.), Design Computing and Cognition’06, Springer, Dordrecht, The Nether-lands, pp. 695-710.Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. D.: 2007, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio, New York.

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