NonA Weekly: DIGITAL TWINS ♊
Image by @littlekingdoms
Dear readers and friends,
The Metaverse is largely built on video-game engines 🕹️, as a lot of the tools 🧰 that power these digital environments have been used by game designers for decades (see Decentraland, The Sandbox or Cryptovoxels). These simulated environments allow for a spectrum of activities to take place, ranging from work 💼 to play 🎮 and even e-commerce 🛒. If we are to spend increasing amounts of our time navigating through digital environments through augmented reality glasses or VR headsets, who should design these spaces and where does the architect’s role in this vision of the future lie?
1. USING IMAGINARY WORLDS 🌍 AS SUSTAINABLE MODELS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE ☀️💧
Liam Young is a speculative ARCHITECT, product designer, and director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction, and futures. Young specializes in designing environments for the film and television industry, harbouring the belief that creating imaginary worlds 🌍grants us the ability to connect emotionally to the ideas and challenges of our future 🔮.
2. WILL ARCHITECTS EMBRACE THE METAVERSE 🌐?
Once we move past its aesthetic resolution and entertainment value, architecture 🏛️ designed for the Metaverse could mutually benefit both the physical and the digital WORLDS. Despite all the hype that paints the Metaverse as a single digital world that we can all visit, the reality is much closer to being a new way of using technology 💻 that adds a digital layer to our physical existence.
3. FIVE VIDEO GAMES 🎮 WHERE ARCHITECTURE CREATES A “LIFELIKE AND IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE”
Panoramic maps, playful diagrams and layered illustrations feature in Videogame Atlas, a BOOK 📚 by research studio You + Pea that highlights the use of architecture in video games 🕹️.
4. GAMING TECHNOLOGY 🤖 CAN HELP ARCHITECTS “ENGAGE PEOPLE IN A MORE DYNAMIC AND INCLUSIVE WAY”
Visualisation techniques from video games could help planners and the public understand architecture, according to architects that use gaming software. Dezeen has teamed up with Epic Games to host a live online TALK 🎤 exploring how visualisation tools such as Twinmotion transform architecture.
5. NAVIGATING THE METAVERSE FOR ARCHITECTS 👷
Design and technology leaders at HOK share their thoughts 💭 on the metaverse and the role that ARCHITECTS and designers can play in shaping this exciting new immersive world
6. THE GAMER 🎮 ARCHITECT
The Gamer Architect is a community that brings architecture to a wider audience through gaming 🕹️ and digital creativity 🎨. A startup and community created to share the influence of architecture, design and technology in VIDEOGAMES and the gamer world.
7. ARCHITECTING 🏗️ THE METAVERSE
The world is witnessing a major shift from the real economy to the digital economy, and the integration of these two has accelerated drastically since the global pandemic. For many years, the internet is mostly a 2D catalogue with hyperlinks 💾, and now it has finally started to look interesting with the potential for 3D experiences 🤖 and will change the way we work, shop, and live, how can ARCHITECTS play a role in shaping and enriching the grand metaverse?
Stay creative and see you all next week! 👋
Daniela
