Second Life / First Land
2007, installation

Once we admit that the internet is not a virtual place but a real location, then there is no doubt about the role of the architect inside the screen. Most of the buildings in Second Life are designed by 3D programmers, who demonstrate extraordinary skill and technical expertise in transferring the most banal buildings from the ‘first life’, i.e. the real world, into the second. A building takes a long time to design and construct, but once you have built it you can reproduce it with just a click, seeing infinite copies of the same houses spreading over the hills and islands of Second Life, perhaps differing slightly in the arrangement of flower beds in the gardens, but all with the same roofs, the same shutters – like a second Aegean, where contractors race to add more and more white-box rooms, without going to the trouble of designing anything at all.

The first piece of land I bought in Second Life was a very small plot, just 512 square metres, on the island of Solbim. I found it one Monday night and had to make a snap decision, because these small plots of First Land were being sold almost immediately, as part of Linden Labs’ efforts to promote land ownership. By now, almost all the land has been sold and the First Land programme has been suspended, leaving new members of Second Life to vie with each other at auctions to secure a plot – with prices rising every day.

In First Land I had the classic problem of an architect who is also a property owner: I fell out with my neighbour, who thought my home was an eyesore. In Second Life I’m called Andreas Onlyone, and I live in the Tube House with Angelo Click.