Ryan Schultz sent me a great wikinomics in action story last week, highlighting the fact that Studio Wikitecture won the “Founder’s Award” for their open source entry to a competition hosted by Architecture for Humanity on the Open Architecture Network. Their entry, for a tele-medicine facility in Western Nepal, was selected for a reason that is truly music to our ears: “for embracing a truly collaborative way of working using online crowdsourcing and Second Life as a way to create a highly participatory design approach.”

The details of their entry can be found here. To quote the project description:

In keeping with the collaborative spirit of the Open Architecture Network, this entry was created by an open and public community of over 40 contributors from around the world representing a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. To facilitate this effort in design collaboration, we developed a grassroots ’3D-Wiki’ technology that is built on the virtual reality platform: Second Life. With this technology, we were able to focus a very diverse range of ideas into a naturally evolving process ranging from comprehensive text-based research to 2D plan diagrams and on into immersive 3D virtual models designed and built on a replica of the project site.

Moreover, in truly embracing the principles of wikinomics, the description goes onto note that this project will live on:

The virtual replica we have developed will not disappear after this competition is complete, but will live on as an evolving virtual model of the real life site in Nepal, echoing each new development and opportunity as the project comes to life. Though the real life site may be challenging to access, this mirror rendition of the project site will 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. In addition to the virtual counterpart, we have also introduced a web-based 2D portal that communicates with the virtual model. In this way, those who cannot or do not care to access Second Life, will still be able to join the team and lend their specific knowledge and support.

The story announcing the victory can be found here. There are also a lot of cool links that Ryan forwarded that wikinomics readers might be interested in:

The main website.

The finals competition boards (Flickr slide show).

A time lapse video of the evolving design.

Video showing how the “Wiki Tree” works.

A journal article outlining, in detail, the three Wikitecture experiments.

The Studio Wikitecture Blog

So congratulations to the entire Studio Wikitecture team on a job well done, this is truly an award well earned – and readers, keep those wikinomics in action stories coming!