Metaverse Urbanism

Studio Patrik Schumacher

Tutors Jose Pareja, Philipp Siedler

Team Amanat Sobti, Ben Gu, Luyao Huang, Michelle Pereira, Rishil Parikh

We live in an era of a significant shift in the way virtual environments are being perceived and experienced. These environments have given rise to endless possibilities with regards to social, communicative, and interactive transactions.  

As a step to develop these virtual environments further, metaverse was conceptualised as the point where physical and virtual realities merge. With the advancements in VR and AR technology various levels of immersive experiences are now being realised, while the development and design of these virtual environments will be largely influenced by architects.  

The approach towards metaverse urbanism proposes to view the metaverse as a constantly adaptive and semiologically influenced navigable platform. This virtual environment can create opportunities for heightened levels of human interaction enriched by occurrences in our physical realities. By creating spatial differentiations within the paths and geometries of varied areas of urbanity and suburbanity an evolving spatial identity is formulated as users cross the different spaces of the city. 

Within this virtual environment, the metaverse is visualised as a dynamic urban platform that is centered around user-generated, information-rich systems. With the adoption of user data and the principles of machine learning, users benefit from customisable, user-specific experiences that can be communicated with other users. This shared, decentralised platform is endowed with possibilities to transform the urban fabric and initiate reactions to changes in aspects such as user demands, or fluctuations of market value. To propagate interaction and awareness within this virtual environment a redefinition of architectural systems is implemented to establish a new framework of heightened interaction.