Law Society: architect's notes

We now have a parcel of land in Miramare available for the building to house the Law Society. Miramare is ideal for a civic type building due to its location in the traditional center of SL overlooking the Governor's mansion in one of the Welcome Area sims across the water. It's one of the four city sims, collectively called Nova Albion, which are the only sims in SL to have a double prim allotment. It's an early LL experiment, like the suburban sims of Boardman and Brown that Ingrid and Barnes have been restoring. The same spirit of restoration and improvement is evident in Miramare.

Miramare is a public sim, not the pet project of any political or commercial interest, so it's suitable for a non-partisan, non-commercial research and discussion center. The only organization in place at this time is the city sims residents association. I asked about it today, and received an invitation, and also asked about what sort of build would suit the long term residents' vision of Miramare. Answer: an urban tower.

A fellow architect who shall remain nameless leapt into action to produce the ideal pink spinny griefer tower. All we need to add is political signage and a 2 mil pricetag on the land. : P

Well the tower seems to have disappeared, but I did get a screenshot for my picks!

how about an open-air amplitheatre, not grecco-roman, but something that makes use of the landscape and draws attention to the special inter-zone of the sim itself? Something that draws upon the site and its surroundings for its appeal.

I think that large towers, like roads, stairways, and other RL tropes, serve marginal practical purpose in SL, but what should we replace them with? Go architects, Go!

Thanks for the suggestions and for elaborating on the thought behind them. Right now I've simply placed one of my garden pavilions on the site, and set up Linden trees like the 'indigenous' ones to shelter the pavilion a bit. This provides a place for discussion meetings such as Thinkers meetings. That pavilion looks best in a woodland setting like my old sandbox or UNLIMITED in green season. But it looks out of place in a sim set up as an urban core, and densely crisscrossed with Linden infrastructure: canals, walkways, roads and bridges.

Miramare is very different from the sims they roll out these days. To give you an idea of that difference, this small parcel of 5632 square meters is crisscrossed by so much infrastructure that it is split into six plots. I get the impression that the original planner must have assumed we'd all be building on a much smaller scale than we do. If we crammed our avatars into realistically scaled spaces under low ceilings, and accepted the jarring camera angle problems we get when moving about in those spaces then our built-up sims could contain many more buildings.

Btw we now have our official Law Society forum. I'm just posting this here in case Frank wants to organize that forum as a reference library of case studies or something equally structured. Musings on architecture might not fit : )

The Miramare parcel is very attractive. I notice that there is a floating platform at the limit of unaided flight, and a lovely open space park with the open pavilion.

If the Law Society were to locate there, it might be nice to build the library and club room on that floating platform, leaving the ground level park and greco-roman pavilion as open space. A few portkeys could be set in the floor, linking to the club/library above and other useful places, and perhaps a pleasantly designed ground-level vendor for Law Society publications.

This use of the "air rights" would also allow the property owner to lease out other rights that would not interfere with the floating sky platform.

I'm summarizing and reposting to the new Law Society Group Forum some of the discussions we've had so far. I agree that this Poli Sci forum is a good place to continue posting as well.

Frank

Frank, the temporary floating platform I've been inhabiting while preparing a standard to-scale site plan is located at z=118 meters. I wonder if 'at the limit of unaided flight' is a clue that we're talking about different structures.... There appear to be skyboxes at a considerably higher elevation that look like they might be floating above that site, but actually belong to other properties.

Glad you like the open space park and open pavilion idea. While consulting with established residents of Miramare I learned that this property has traditionally functioned as an urban park for the sim. We have Tiger Crossing, the previous owner, to thank for that. Tiger maintained an ice rink there, and a gathering spot with display screen and seating, as well as his free rent for newbies apartment building further in the interior of the sim. I feel that it's appropriate for any civic type building to be part of the fabric of the existing community. The design tradeoffs should include complementing the good architecture already in place, and helping to mitigate unwholesome views of spinny pink towers. There really was one there! The screenshot is now enshrined on my profile for at least two days. : )

Hey Traxx.. looking forward to your build in Miramare. The city sims are pretty unique and people who have land there seem to be getting on the city build bandwagon. The area is looking much more cohesive than it did when I started.

A public building would be very cool. If you do decide on a library, there are actual books in sl that you can read, I can let you know where to get them.

the pink tower was fabulous, kudos to the architect!

P.S. I hear it was the linden library texture "pink toile" and tinted hot pink ontop of that, plus set to light, and did anyone mention it spun???

Some Law Society Observers have contacted me in-world to express concern that Law Society might invest in property purchased from a member, based on our chatter in this thread.

Presently, with less than L$2,000 in the trust fund, Law Society is not in a position to invest in any property. I plan to issue a year-end report on total enrollment and financial status in January.

At that time, it might be appropriate to open the Society up to nominations for officers on an ongoing basis. Meanwhile, I continue watching the forums and encourage all with an interest to post information and insights about the Law Society and its direction.

Alright, who's the wise guy? Somebody submitted a postcard of this constuction site before I logged on to fix the experimental column! Probably one of the neighbors who thinks this building should be done by now : )

UPDATE: intrepid member of Law Society conducts investigation, successfully discovering the true identity of the postcard perpetrator. : P

The postcard perpetrator turns out to be one of the infamous Scofflaw Society who delight in plastering select locations with their unwholesome messages. I stealthily took a screenshot of the graffiti as viewed from the park directly in front of the construction site. Does anybody know what happens if you actually go to the address mentioned in the graffiti? Like, how bad is it? Should I maybe send an alt in case somebody might see me there?