I’m standing here in the Metaverse.
It’s essentially a bunch of virtual worlds where you can walk around as a digital avatar,
talk to other people, play games and buy and sell things.
Now, before you stop watching, I just want to say that I feel the same way as you.
What the hell is this, is it even real and should we be doing anything about it?
Well it’s already getting pretty serious.
Right now, people are spending millions in real-life money to reserve digital plots of
land, office space and apartments.
And huge names like Zaha Hadid Architects and Manchester City Football Club are exploring
the possibilities of design in the Metaverse.
Yes, really.
It’s a space where we’re no longer restrained by things like, you know, gravity, the principles
of engineering or securing enough money to go ahead with a building project.
For me, it's not an escape into a fantasy world, into video game-like experiences, but
direct continuity with social reality.
So what does all this mean for the world of architecture and construction?
Is the metaverse really going to end up being a thing?
What could we build without the limits of construction here on earth?
And how might that impact the way we create our physical world in the future?
Big tech, big brands, big ambitions.
The Metaverse is the next frontier.
If you’re listening and that was a little bit over your head, don’t worry because
I’m right there with you.
If you’re anything like me before I made this video, you might be thinking, is anyone actually
building the Metaverse yet or is it just a bunch of corporate techy buzzwords that
nobody really understands?
What is driving this Doge-mania and where does it go from here?
And yes, there are a ton of buzzwords.
I’m not here to preach the gospel of NFTs or get you to invest in Tomorrow’s Buildcoin.
I’m also not going to try and explain the ins and outs of the Metaverse to you, because
frankly, I can’t.
In its most basic form, it’s a network of virtual worlds that you can access parts of
through your computer, or if you want to be more immersed in it, a VR headset.
I was pretty shocked to learn that people were parting with real money to buy virtual real estate
in this new world.
But they are and it’s getting serious.
Now, first-off the Metaverse isn’t owned by one single company, and it’s not one
single app.
Facebook’s parent company, now called Meta of course, is leading the development of this
new digital world.
Depending who you ask, it’s either the future or a whole bunch of hypotheticals.
Meta hasn’t exactly been raking in the cash yet.
In February 2020, the company set the record for the largest single-day trading loss of
any U.S. company ever.
They must really believe in this Metaverse stuff.
One thing that’s certain - and potentially crazy - is that there’s a lot of money being
put into reserving and securing digital plots of land to build everything from virtual offices
to shopping centres and even sports stadiums.
The real estate investors are paying millions of dollars for plots of land that don't even exist.
All of those spaces need to be designed.
And we have a whole industry of people who are kind of already doing that.
If you looked at a typical architecture studio or construction site just 50 years ago, you’d
probably find rolls of paper drawings and diagrams marked up and sprawled out across
the site.
But in the 1990s, a little something called the Internet took off.
You can now glimpse the future with nothing more than a modem, a phone line and a few
dollars a month.
Allison, can you explain what Internet is?
In the mid 90s, Columbia University’s school of architecture launched the first paperless
studio, and at the time, that was a pretty radical concept.
But we’ve come a long way.
Today, digital information models are the design process and working environment.
The graphical 3D models and renders they enable let us check how a building will look and
feel before actually sending a crew out to begin construction.
But in the Metaverse, that digital render isn’t a step along the way, it is the final destination.
In this reality, you don’t have to think about how to counteract the weight of a skyscraper
sinking into the soil or how the roof will hold up in a storm.
We are trying to bring our actual expertise into the metaverse as we used to be architects
working super digital focused on visualisations.
There is just no no laws for us when we bring architecture to the metaverse.
Patrick Vogel, a trained architect, has gone from designing real-world buildings to launching
his own Metaverse architecture studio called Shift/Space.
We use tools like 3D S-Max, Rhino, also Houdini for more complex shapes, Grasshopper.
And then we try to translate this to this Sandbox metaverse creation tools that you have.
You have to build everything out of voxels.
So this might be also the reason why maybe some 3D people would call it a bit cheesy
or cheap at the moment, because the metaverse is basically just being created by the time
we're speaking right now.
So it's all, in Germany, we say bei Kinderschuhen, in children's shoes.
They’ve partnered with a Metaverse platform called Sandbox to create a series of Metaverse
mansions to be auctioned off.
We thought yeah, we have to sell this and maybe we will be millionaires.
Of course we are not.
It went really, really good.
And it sold for about, I think, fifty seven thousand dollars and we were like, of course,
having a good evening that day.
Now, you might be wondering why on earth someone would pay tens of thousands of dollars to
own a house that only exists online.
Well, I’m wondering that too.
But some worlds in the Metaverse are creating a scarcity effect.
Everyrealm is one of the companies at the forefront of Metaverse real estate and development.
Yes, this is a real thing and it is really happening.
They’ve worked on over 100 real estate developments in Metaverse worlds where there’s a limited
number of plots of land available for people to buy, sell and rent.
Now the process of actually buying that land involves cryptocurrency and the blockchain
and a lot of stuff I don’t want to pretend to understand right now.
But the gist is, people are betting that in the future, they’re going to be able to
develop the land and build residences that someone might want to rent out - virtually.
Or build a store that a real brand would want to spend real money to advertise or sell their
products in - again, virtually.
And for now at least, the demand really is there.
Now, Metaverse architecture isn’t all about making a quick buck.
Top architects are using it as a way to push the bounds of design.
Maybe you’ve heard of parametric design in architecture, the free-flowing futuristic
style influenced heavily by computer algorithms.
That comes from this guy, Patrik Schumacher.
He was Zaha Hadid’s right-hand man and is now the practice’s principal architect,
which means he has a lot of influence in the world of design.
And he’s getting in on the Metaverse.
In my case and our case, Zaha Hadid Architects, we are heavily investing currently in that
and building teams around the multiple projects coming online.
But we don't want to switch away from architecture in the physical world and urbanism in the
physical world.
So I think that can be a multidisciplinary design firm.
In fact, Zaha Hadid Architects is working to create a Metaverse version of Liberland,
a micronation proposed by a libertarian Czech politician.
No, you’re not dreaming.
This is all really happening.
In the real world, Liberland is just a few square miles between Croatia and Serbia.
But the Metaverse version paints a picture of what it could be, a futuristic crypto paradise.
The design remains pretty much driven by the same social functionality criteria of organisation
of aesthetics and logical orientation.
But then the engineering stands up is radically different.
We use gravity as an orienting device.
We don't want to have things floating around in all directions and that gives us certain
stability.
But we don't have, you know, physical forces to deal with, so we have a new set of constraints,
but they also have parallels.
Even, you know, we will have curvature and we love the light to play on the curvature.
So this is expensive both in the physical world and in the virtual world because these
geometries are more complex and harder to render.
So it's quite curious what's expensive in the physical world, also turns out to be expensive.
Of course, there are more grounded examples of architecture in the Metaverse.
Manchester City Football Club is creating the world’s first Metaverse football stadium
with a virtual reality team at Sony.
With no limit of how many people can fit in a virtual stadium, in theory there’s no
cap on the amount of people who could attend a match.
And you wouldn’t be limited to just one seat with one point of view, the virtual stadium
could give fans the chance to watch a game from multiple angles in real time.
No battling the crowds to get home, no cold weather, no overpriced beers.
I’m not at all convinced that our future will be full of people sitting in their houses
with VR headsets over their heads. Feel free to watch this video back in years to come and quote me on that.
But I can kind of see the value the Metaverse could offer to the design world.
It’s a chance to think creatively without restrictions – and with all the attention
and investment in digital design, it’s a good opportunity for the industry to show
what it’s capable of.
Digital cities don’t just have to live in the Metaverse.
Just look at digital twins today, designers are already creating virtual clones of real-life
buildings or even entire cities.
Those models can monitor real-time traffic patterns, building maintenance and even simulate
what would happen if the city were to be hit by a natural disaster.
That all makes it easier to make better decisions about how to manage our built environment
without having to wait until issues begin to show.
So as far-fetched as the Metaverse may seem, the concept of a virtual world might actually
help us save the one we’re building today.
I think it will be a very satisfying experience.
And my hope is that it does not mean that we all sit at home.
But that we are out together in these mixed reality scenarios where the urban environments
and architectural environments are infused with windows into the virtual world, with
augmented information with holographic telepresencing of participants from around the world.
So that's true globalisation without the physical isolation.
That's my vision and my dream of the metaverse.
If you enjoyed this video, or even just understood it, and want to learn more about
where construction is headed, make sure you’re subscribed to Tomorrow’s Build.