NonA Weekly: DESIGNING VIRTUAL WORLDS 🌐

Image by @iHumanFilm

Dear readers and friends,

Everybody talks about Metaverse 🌌🌐, but hardly anyone agrees on what it is. For the moment, it is still enigmatic 🤔, however, it seems like its ambiguity is its strength 🦾. Not a day goes by without a new article or a video on this subject, trying to convince people 💬 that Metaverse will inevitably become a part of our daily lives soon. Architects and designers 👷 are essential parties to the ongoing discussion as it is a spatial innovation that requires the Internet 💻 to be redesigned as a 3D environment.
Does it make sense to spend so much energy and time creating 🏗️ a copycat of existing real life? Or can we find new ways of inhabiting a vast, desolate universe 🚀 rather than replicating our planning traditions or real estate ambitions for the real world, of which we have already seen unpleasant results all over the planet? 🌍

1. DEMOCRATIZING REALITY 👌
At the core of efforts to design extended reality (XR) environments is a desire to make these projects more human 🧍 and more relatable. As technologists, ARCHITECTS, and users themselves develop new tools ⚒️ for the metaverse, as well as augmented and virtual spaces, new projects are increasingly democratized and open source. At the same time, the design process is being reimagined.

2. IS METAVERSE REALLY THE END OF BARRIERS 🚧 FOR ARCHITECTS?
When architects think 💡 within the limits of real-life architecture, their initial response to this new universe is to celebrate the “unlimited possibilities” of the Metaverse. Metaverse feels like a light at the end of a tunnel as a limitless realm for ARCHITECTS, who have been designing ✍️ as if the resources were endless for the past decades and are now forced to restrict their imagination because of the current ecological and economic crisis in the world. However, the construction of a virtual environment -simultaneously experienced by the masses- still has its limits, such as budget, gravity, or materials, rather than being an unlimited domain.

3. OPPORTUNITIES 💡
Is the metaverse a land of opportunity for architects? Or is all this merely a fun distraction from the ‘real’ work of the physical world? What are the design opportunities for ARCHITECTS in a realm where they are competing with game designers and others from outside architecture? 💭

4. WHAT IS METAVERSE ARCHITECTURE? 🏛️
Designing the metaverse, the sky is no longer the limit. Metaverse architecture creates spaces where the real and the virtual world become one. Designing the metaverse is creating a virtual world that knows no boundaries to creativity – the sky is no longer the limit 🚀. Metaverse ARCHITECTURE creates spaces where the real and the virtual world become one.

5. THE DESIGN GUIDE 📝 TO THE METAVERSE
We’re all trying to wrap our heads around the metaverse, the emerging network of virtual worlds focused on social connection 💑, commerce 🛒, gaming 🎮, and much more. Designers are already expanding that network and will continue to do so. Here’s an updated GUIDE to the evolving role of design in the metaverse.

6. WHAT IS THE METAVERSE? AN EXPLANATION FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET IT 🤔
Talking about the metaverse feels a lot like talking about the internet back in the 70s and the 80s 💾. As the building blocks of the new form of communication were being laid down, it sparked speculation around what it would look like and how people would use it ⚙️. HERE is a series of experts to break it down for those who still don’t get what the metaverse is all about.

7. HOW IS THE USE OF VIRTUAL REALITY IN ARCHITECTURE BECOMING INCREASINGLY 📈 MORE SIGNIFICANT? 
The importance of the use of advanced technologies, such as the likes of virtual reality in the scene of ARCHITECTURE, is becoming increasingly necessary. No matter how beautiful a rendered image 🖼️ may be, it will always lack the capacity to fully convey the scope and feel of a project as a whole, further perpetuating the necessity to incorporate the use of these technologies 🤖 at a professional practice level.

Stay creative and see you all next week! 👋
Daniela