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Welcome to the Metaverse
Over the last year, the ‘metaverse’ has become one of the most discussed, and controversial, buzzwords in technology and design. It can be broadly defined as a persistent virtual world which we will use as a counterpart to our physical world. Although it lacks a fixed definition, it is typically assumed that the metaverse will involve games and game-like experiences alongside interoperable software platforms, blockchain technologies, social media and cryptocurrency, creating an online environment for work and leisure.
Yet while the metaverse is often framed as a ‘spatial’ internet, there is far less discourse on how these spaces will be designed and what architecture and urbanism expertise is needed in this process. With a rise in content creators and world-builders made possible by countless online game platforms and game engines, what will the role of the trained urban designer be? How can we help to masterplan the metaverse?
This year Research Cluster 12 examined the metaverse as a subject and site for urbanism through video game technologies, creating designs that explore the potential migration of real-world urban design principles into persistent virtual experiences.
We began the year with a deep analysis of current metaverse-like platforms, including popular ‘creative’ video games. These studies unravelled how each platform engages with questions of identity, construction, aesthetic style, communication and economy. Having gained knowledge of current metaverse technologies, students produced projects that challenged the concept of a virtual ‘digital twin’ by investigating a site in London and prototyping how its physical form, culture and economy could be translated into a metaverse-like environment.
Speculative projects then drew from this research, using the future metaverse as a site to develop playable video games that interrogate the design of new urban systems. Ideas included how the highly volatile cryptocurrency markets could drive a dynamic new form of decentralised financial district; creating a metaverse ‘wonderland’ to encourage social use of public parks in the physical world; and designing new forms of virtual cultural centre that combine procedural generation with player-led collaborative design. This research challenged the metaverse’s potential power structures, prototyping new forms of public participation through ‘Video Game Urbanism’.