Image-verse

Studio Patrik Schumacher

Tutors Jose Pareja, Philipp Siedler

Team Dan Wang, Zihan Xu, Qinling Li, Rui Zhang, Qiurong Lai

Metaverse cities, like the physical ones, are spaces for people to live and work in. However, in the physical urban environments, people’s perception is much more restricted by the rules, efficiency, convenience, and practicalities of the material world. Our project - the Image-verse - based on Kevin Lynch's notion of the image of the city, aims to explore how metaverse cities can develop their own unique and powerful urban imagery, by focusing on their legibility and imageability. 

Legibility is seen here as the figurative logic of urban generation. By rethinking the way the city is generated and reconsidering the logic of people’s behaviour, the Image-verse is simulated by the spontaneous and bottom-up occupation of particles on a collaged terrain. At the same time, the polycentric and the network systems of Image-verse are abstracted from the initial particle simulation results. Unlike the physical cities, the solid geometry of metaverse urban spaces can defy almost all the physical conditions.  

In addition to Lynch's five elements of the city, particles form an important part of the visual qualities and the main building material of Image-verse. We see imageability as an abstract intuition of city perception and, to some extent, the language through which the city and people interact. Across the formal studies and experiments with the perception, particles are widely used in our design, for example as building materials and surface designs, urban landmarks and landscapes, and pertinently, as the AI language of navigation systems. 

This metaverse platform based on big data and blockchain, in addition to being the Decentralized Autonomous Organisation system generated by users from the bottom up, has the service terminal which also generates heat maps and private recommendations through data analysis to help users experience the city more. The friend network formed among users opens further development possibilities for the Image-verse.