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Zaha Hadid Architects is planning a metaverse city for Liberland

2022-02-25T15:25:00-05:00

In January, Liberland unveiled its most dazzling and arguably most convincing proposal yet. Working with Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, Jedlička portrayed his country as a futuristic crypto paradise through a fully realized city in the metaverse. Picture a national assembly hall, a buzzy NFT bazaar, office towers—all done in Hadid’s trademark swooping, swoon-worthy architectural style.

ZHA principal Patrik Schumacher has been personally spearheading the metaverse version of a disputed quasi Freestate called the Free Republic of Liberland since shortly after it was founded in 2015 by the self-styled libertarian Czech politician Vít Jedlička.

Liberland City Hall. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

Jedlička and Schumacher’s joint ambit has grown over the preceding years and now seeks to (virtually) cement its place in the popular imagination through the establishment of institutional infrastructure and the push for eventual recognition of statehood from the United Nations.

Liberland's virtual trading floor. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

“It was time to turn ideas into something more concrete,” the 38-year-old politician told Quartz. “It’s important to show to the world that we are serious about starting development in Liberland.”

Liberland's NFT Plaza. Image courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects.

An avowed libertarian himself, Schumacher says the program of parametr...

Whatever happened to Liberland?

2019-08-22T18:38:00-04:00

Liberland’s earthly domain is a constellation of locations and events that gravitate around the unoccupied Gornja Siga. These props, in various stages of construction, share a fundamental quality of ephemerality and mobility, as if recalling their origins as a dream spawned on the internet.

The self-declared libertarian micronation of Liberland has vanished somewhat from the media's spotlight since its founder and current President, Vít Jedlička, planted the utopia's state flag on Gornja Siga, an unoccupied Danube island between Serbia and Croatia, in 2015. Liberland instantly found an early and vocal supporter in Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects and outspoken evangelist for free market capitalism, but what has really been happening since then?

Hans Larsson's recent Volume piece brings us up to speed and talks about the Schumacher-juried Liberland master plan design competition, decentralized autonomous blockchain governance, and neo-metabolist-inspired off-grid floating settlements.

"When seen from the right angle, the elements coalesce into an image of a new country being born," Larsson writes. "Shift your position slightly and you see a banal hoax. But if enough people buy into it, does this even matter?"

Introducing Liberland, an aspirational libertarian micro-nation along the Danube

2015-08-12T13:58:00-04:00

Gornja Siga has come, over the last few months, to assume an outsize role in the imagination of many — not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and in the United States...What novel society might be accomplished in a place like this, with no national claim or tenant? Such were the thoughts that had for some time inflamed the spirit of Vit Jedlicka, a 31-year-old Czech politician who traveled to the land earlier this year and, in broad daylight, planted a new flag in its unstable soil.

The New York Times has posted a riveting portrait of the ongoing movement to establish a libertarian micro state in the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia. While unmentioned in the article, there's already fascinating connections between the potential state and the world of architecture.

Last month, the self-described libertarian and Director of Zaha Hadid Architects, Patrik Schumacher posted on Facebook, "LIVE AND LET LIVE IN LIBERLAND !!! Lets support Vit Jedlicka's effort to establish the first libertarian country in Europe."

Schumacher visited Jedlicka at the "Czech embassy of Liberland" – aka his apartment in Prague – to talk about "entrepreneurship, markets, free money and about the possibility of a free market urban and architectural order."

In the posting, Schumacher admits he is "itching to get involved" in the project. Schumacher is a well-known proponent of free market principles, often discussing libertarianism in conjunction with his own theories regarding architecture's au...

Life in the ocean micronation of Sealand, population: 2

2015-04-20T15:14:00-04:00

Michael Bates grew up seven nautical miles off the coast of England, on a platform made of concrete and metal. Michael, the son of Roy Bates, is the Prince of the Principality of Sealand, a contested micronation [...]. Today, as futurists, tech billionaires and libertarians start looking to the sea for the next stage of cities and governance, Sealand serves as a tiny example [...]. What can the experiences of the Bates family tell those who dream about ocean living?