CYBERTECTURE

Studio Patrik Schumacher

Tutors Pierandrea Angius

Team Manousof Stefan-Tzon, Yang Qi, Yassin Amin, Yu Yang

The emergence of COVID-19 has drastically altered social interactions, shifting them towards a model of distant communication. One of the most highly affected areas of this transition is the working environment, where the main challenge is to preserve the same level of communication in the new remote circumstances. For this, numerous video-conferencing applications are being used, however, the existence of multiple three-dimensional cyberspace platforms hints at a more functional and efficient virtual interaction.

The post-COVID era is estimated to attain the elements of remote working, combining them into a hybrid model of “going to the office” and “working from home”. Accepting the benefits of the remote model allows for the expansion of a necessary approach towards the virtual world and its relation to the physical world. For this reason, the future of cyberspace holds a swift sophistication of the virtual, the development of which will be highly influenced by architects.

CYBERTECTURE introduces the innate exploration of a cyber-urban incubator, a space where both the tangible and intangible worlds meet, interact, and expand, aiming to create a highly fluid and productive working environment. Ultimately, this environment generates and evolves start-up companies, fundamentally propelled by complex communication systems. The association and relationship between the real and the virtual are a crucial aspect of this new working incubator, therefore, the analysis and understanding of inter-world collaboration scenarios has been a key driving factor of the project. The research makes use of the spatial complexity that arises from a hybrid set of systems, conclusively defining new levels of communication and flexibility that the conventional, physical workspace lacks. This hybrid scheme is achieved through the designs of various systems at different scales, both physical and virtual, ranging from human-scale furniture to urban-scale structures, allowing them to correlate and grant agency to users.