A virtual world where people would use digital avatars to live work and play online he called
it the metaverse
This piece of land with snoop dogg's face on it is owned by the rapper he's building
a virtual mansion on it.
Metaverse is catching on and the people are going crazy for it.
But one of the biggest impacts of it is that its shifting and changing industries, from
ofcourse gaming and entertainment, to tourism, to workspaces and even architecture.
I had made a whole video about how architecture will change with the onset of the metaverse,
but the truth is it had been evolving for quite some time.
Companies like Meta aka facebook are betting billions of dollars on the hope that virtual
reality is the future of human interaction The technologies that make up the metaverse
mainly VR, AR, MR and XR have been all around us for quite some time.
Its only recently they have just got a makeover under this umbrella term of the metaverse
and suddenly so many people have joined the bandwagon.
Today in this video we will exploring architects who have already taken the steps towards a
metaverse, before it became a mainstream thing.
We are going to be looking at three stories, where the underlying technologies of the metaverse
have been used to change how we design, construct and perceive architecture.
Welcome to Blessedarch and today we are talking about the Architects of the metaverse.
When I say the word metaverse, what might come to your head is this digital animated
world full of saturated colours, interactive things and flying advertisements.
Basically people think the metaverse will be a completely virtual reality, that can
be experienced through various gadgets.
This is exactly the kind of world that people over at companies like facebook are trying
to create.
These companies just decided to move us all into the metaverse like they're putting their
grandma into a nursing home sorry nana you have to live in the computer now
But the thing is this world of facebook will most probably be very close to our reality,
basically it might look like a combination of the world you already live in with Instagram.
It might fell exciting because of its underlying technology but maybe not so much in its design.
And the reason for that might just be that architects are not at the core of this new
worldbuilding.
But what if they were.
What if architects could create a digital world, where achieving the impossible would
just be any other day?
But i definitely think that moving forward you know metaverse as a whole there's so many
other possibilities within what we can do with this space you know how how can that
be scripted or coded into what we want to do in it
This is Matheus stancati, he is the co-founder of the design company called Sunken Blimp.
And He has created this virtual stage, a VR space where people from all over the world
can come together, connect and share ideas.
So the stage will be this virtual space where we can come together share ideas host conversations
presentations and start experimenting on how to actually engage with a group of people
in virtual reality which is a conversation that's been going on for a while and how to
present right even presenting projects like we present on architecture and do reviews
and all that how do you do that in a virtual space where the rules of physics and how things
can actually operate can be completely different So yes the idea of meeting virtually is not
novel but as we move towards a virtual reality for all the design of this new world does
matter, similar to how the design of the built environment around you matters.
From a design standpoint it's one single surface that bends around and makes the audience and
makes the stage and makes the covering makes the floors and there's no really like difference
between what stage what's floor what's audience everything flows together so it gives the
at least the feeling that you know you can walk up the stage at any point you know presenters
and audience have the same role in this so that is what we we started from
And this vision of his is not just limited to creating this one stage, this as he says,
is version one.
Different than an architectural project building a physical building you get people's experience
when the job is done and then you know you can take that as information and move on and
you know the knowledge for the next project but now in something like this you can take
the feedback and keep updating and reiterating the project because you know it's a different
approach it's an ongoing you know space creation in a way
What’s fascinating is that at the center of this stage, the main crux of it is design.
He constantly works on improving and changing his versions, updating them to fit the needs
of the users.
The question of even accessibility and design right um in in physical life right in the
physical world we have accessibility in terms of um people with disabilities so let's say
wheelchairs that's the classic example right buildings have to have access for those who
cannot you know climb up the stairs however in the metaverse or virtual spaces no a wheelchair
a wheelchair for example is not a problem and you could have a staircase however there's
other types of accessibility issues that should be taken into consideration and right now
it's not really the main point of conversation in virtual spaces however some people are
more you know sensitive to strobe lights you know having seizures with strobe lights and
then some materials or some virtual spaces that have you know lights flashing or materials
flickering that could cause problems and what we're talking about here is that this virtual
spaces could know who you are based on your profile and that space could be different
for you based on your you know requirements or preferences so maybe this ability is not
designing a space that serves all but designing a system that can modify depending on what
you need.
At the end of the day, the profession of architecture, is about solving problems through design,
in a virtual world , the problems will change and so will the solutions.
So even being in this world of endless possibilities, you do have some restrictions just like in
the physical world and hopefully as we move towards a better more accessible virtual reality,
we will have more and more architects get more creative with their creations.
But after seeing this project the design stage and hearing all the news about this new metaverse,
a new question comes to mind.
Will the new world order be completely virtual.
Now hey before we move ahead I actually wanted to talk about the sponsors of this video,
OneistoX.
Now OneistoX is a platform that can give you the digital skills that one requires to be
an architect.
They have an array of courses that can teach you different skillsets for your career.
One of these is their BIM course.
Now BIM is to the architecture industry what Metaverse is to the tech industry.
With OneistoX’s BIM course you learn from industry professionals working in Top firms
and also get to work on a live project.
And the best part is after you are done they give you placement support as well.
SO if you want to take your career to the next level, do checkout OneistoX.
You can find their links in the description.
And now lets get back to our video.
This is it i'm going into the ultranet to save my daughter.
Just like we spend hours and hours in a day on our phones and computers, will we also
do it in the new virtual realm?
And will more and more architects start gravitating towards building these new and fantastic forms.
Will the profession start getting dominated by these so called, Virtual Architects?
Well some people think not.
For one the technologies that will make it more immersive and more easily accessible
are still a few years away.
But cambria will be a completely new advanced and high-end product and it'll be at the higher
end of the price spectrum too.
But there are also people who see this metaverse as something different, they do not see it
as a completely new world that you just escape to they actually see it as a new layer of
reality that can be added over our existing one.
Imagine architecture that blends with technology to create immersive simulations.
For example What if me a client, could compelety experience what my space would look like,
instead of just seeing a few renders on a computer screen.
Well this is exactly what a firm in India tried to do for their client.
This is ARPM design and research from Gurgaon India.
Their experiment with the underlying technologies of the metaverse, actually happened out of
necessity.
From 12 PM today, in whole nation will go into a complete lockdown.
India has become the latest and largest country to introduce a nationwide lockdown in the
fight against the coronavirus.
Now the world changed in the year 2020 and the field of architecture was affected as
well.
For these guys, the problem with their latest project is that they could not keep travelling
to the site and had only seen it once.
As a designer, you tend to spend time at sites, brainstorm ideas , get a feel of what can
go where before you can redesign it.
But since going to the site was not physically possible, they brough the site, to them.
We worked entirely remotely and for that to aid that process sort of we started using
ar it was first easier to actually feel the space ourselves as architects walk around
the space and actually get a feel for how large the corridor width is how large the
doors are what the sizes of different windows and openings are and once we got a feed for
the space we were able to then better design for it and also in the same way that they
brought the site to them they got the final design to the clients doing the usual architectural
visualization step and kind of rendering out images and walkthrough videos and stuff like
that we instead took this model into ar again the final design output that we came up with
and allowed the client to actually walk through the site as if they were walking through the
final design they were able to walk around and understand what the final site would feel
like rather than just look like One of the reasons I really wanted to bring
this story to you guys is to show how the technology behind this is not years away,
its here now.
And its slowly catching on.
So the metaverse might not just mean fantastic and futuristic forms, it might mean new ways
of looking at and aiding process that architects take part in right now.
There are loads of companies who have started giving virtual immersive tours to their clients
of their future design or real estate projects and as we move ahead in the next decade, this
is going to become more main stream all over the world.
But can this go beyond just the designing stage.
There was this one professor back in architecture school, and he used to say Architecture is
not just about designing beautiful buildings it is also about constructing them.
Details he used to say, details are important.
So when we talk about the metaverse will it just remain till the design stage building
these fantastic forms and viewing them or can it actually become an active part of the
construction process?
Well turns out, it can.
This is the use of a digital reality to aid in the construction of pour real world, and
the company behind this is fologram.
I actually sat down with the founders to understand more of what they do.
So fologram is a tool for building mixed reality applications in rhino and grasshopper which
lets you skip the learning curve of game engines like unity for building simple ar apps we
made fologram mostly so that uh creatives like architects engineers artists students
that make things could get stuck into building all of the kind of crazy ideas they had for
mixed reality without needing to go learn to code and things like that
I wanted to go deeper into their work to understand how their technology is helping the construction
sector.
We talked about one of their recent projects the Hobart Hospital redevelopment.
anyone working with 3d models can use follogram to build in augmented reality this includes
bricklayers such as colin from old brick who are now comfortable in using it in their challenging
day-to-day projects basically with the the main thing around the hobart hospital was
the complexity of the layout of these brick benches so it was a sort of 15-storey tower
there to build these brick benches over multiple levels and the traditional way to lay that
out is extremely complex because you basically have all these curved arches that need to
connect and so the traditional way to do it you basically have you use a whole time lane
setting up and then you have one bricklayer that starts i guess at the head of the snake
and then proceeds to go along and in a very trial and error fashion connect the bricks
together because obviously with a curve there's a whole lot of different cutted bricks they
need to do and it really is a case where it's one brick layer with a couple of apprentices
that are just chopping up bricks and he's just trying to put the jigsaw together um
where fologram uh completely changed the game for that is that we provided not only the
the cutting patterns that they had to see so the they could see what bricks they needed
to cut and so they could prepare those uh in advance or concurrently when that's going
on and bringing those bricks up and so it's literally like all right here's the jay bricks
here for or here's the k bricks for the um for the bricklayer they could pick it up and
then with the headset they could see exactly where that brick needed to be placed.
a simple interface allows the bricklayers to view each course they're on and what cut
brick types are required in that moment so basically they were able to guide the brick
layers to create complex geometries in a simple and easy manner
The word democratizing complexity is what came to my mind when we were chatting.
So metaverse as a whole might be a few years away and we will see what it can truly do,
but clearly the technologies that the metaverse is relying on are here right now and they
are helping drive and evolve the profession of architecture.
Whether it is creating a completely new immersive world, changing the design process or become
a part of the construction, the future of the metaverse is bound and limited only by
people’s capabilities and their imagination.
I for one am excited to see these new worlds, or see the change in our existing one, and
I am glad that the people driving these are Architects.
Or should we call them, architects of the metaverse.
and there you have it guys the architects of the metaverse of course this was the first
of many such stories that i will be bringing to you in the coming months but i wanted to
know your thoughts what do you think about these projects and what the metaverse will
mean for the architects also i would like to thank everybody who was a part of this
video and a special thanks to all of this channel's patrons who have helped support
this channel via patreon and via channel memberships if you wish to support it as well you can
find the link for both channel memberships and the patreon link in the description below
or you could also click the join button everybody who was featured on this channel today you
can find their details and how to reach out to them in the description below as always
don't forget to give this video a thumbs up to share this video and to subscribe to Blessedarch
i will see you guys soon with more such content until then bye bye