Archinect - News

Why does the metaverse look so ordinary, UCL researchers ask

2022-04-04T10:32:00-04:00

Last week, our editorial team had some fun with the metaverse. While light-hearted in nature, our April Fools article was nonetheless inspired by the serious interest shown by our community, the architecture world, and society at-large in the metaverse and how architecture and design intersect with virtual space.

Now, a new article by UCL researchers Luke Pearson and Sandra Youkhana puts forward the thesis that the metaverse doesn’t appear as disruptive or radical as the underlying technologies it is often associated with, be it blockchains, cryptocurrencies, or NFTs.

Instead, the team argue that the architecture and urbanism of the metaverse appears to follow real-world principles of design and construction, despite the freedom given by virtual space to transcend these principles.

“People have always imagined cyberspace to look like a version of real urban space,” say Pearson and Youkhana. Th...

BIG unveils designs for Vice's new virtual headquarters 'Viceverse'

2022-03-02T18:17:00-05:00

Two giant names in the world of architecture and online media are now teaming up to take over the metaverse as Vice Media Group has announced a new partnership with Bjarke Ingels Group for a new virtual office space called the Viceverse.

The newly-opened space is hosted by the popular Decentraland platform where it will serve as a kind of virtual innovation lab for the company’s digital creative culture agency, Virtue.

Through its creation, the company says, Virtue will now be able to pursue innovative new ways of collaborating with clients that include brands like Coca-Cola and Beats by Dre.

Image courtesy Decentraland

“It's not about just getting in there and planting a flag, we wanted to do it in style with aesthetics and ideas when creating, so we teamed up with BIG,” creative director Morten Grubak told Campaign magazine. “It just made sense to make a space for ourselves where we can invite clients and collaborators to dip their toes in that space without actually doing a big-...

Decentraland is playing host to six-figure deals as architects begin to embrace the metaverse

2021-12-13T18:55:00-05:00

As part of the design community’s incorporation of talent into the nascent, ever-growing world of blockchain technology and digital architecture, more spaces are cropping up that have the potential to do outsized business opportunities with ramifications in the metaverse and beyond.

One of those spaces is the relatively new Decentraland, a 22-month-old 3D platform that currently plays host to over 90,000 parcels of land subdivided into individual 9-square-mile plots which can command prices as high as $2.43 million as the cost of digital land has boomed in unison with the rise of NFTs.

Metapurse HQ. Image courtesy Voxel Architects.

Thus far, Decentraland has featured some headline-grabbing projects, including a functional digital twin of the auction house Sotheby’s London headquarters. The display of NFT art has become one of the most predominant forms of building in the metaverse, followed by gaming, retail, and other forms of entertainment like blockchain casinos that have users li...