NOT PARALLEL WORLDS

h: Architectural structures in the real world are always scaled to the proportions of a person. But the metaverse has just begun to form its subjectivity. Buildings in parallel worlds do not have to be scaled to human dimensions and needs in the real world. When creating new architectural projects in the metaverse, are you trying to match the dimensions of these buildings with the proportions of avatars?

PS: Human-scale proportioning will largely remain, except in conditions where avatars are differentiated in size, as we see in the case of virtual pop concerts. The default case within the metaverse will be a uniform size of avatar. I do not believe that there will be much buy-in into a hierarchical sizing of avatars in analogy to medieval paintings. 

What might, however, become commonplace is that interior spaces might be bigger than would physically fit in their exteriors. It might make sense to loosen up a very strict coupling between exterior and interior as they have different conditions of recognition and navigation. However, a strong size dissociation between interior and exterior might also be disorienting.

h: How can existing architectural traditions be transferred from the real world to virtual reality? And do we need this transition?

PS: We should not be surprised that current metaverses seem to be mere replicas of familiar buildings and city conditions. This is not primarily due to a lack of imagination on the part of the designers, but reflects the fact that the whole idea and point of the metaverse is to exploit the urban and architectural analogy and the internet users’ navigation and recognition competency, with respect to social situations in urban and architectural spaces for the next stage of the internet as an immersive internet focusing on real-time interaction. The city analogy takes over from the magazine analogy as a source domain for structuring the desired internet interactions. However, while utilization of the analogy is very important in the beginning, in time I foresee a gradual emancipation from this analogy as the new degrees of freedom are explored and exploited for improved social functionality, at a pace that allows end users to be brought along. There remains, however, the requirement that the virtual spaces of various organizations are congenial and identifiable in relation to these organizations’ physical spaces. A further factor that will work towards anchoring the metaverse’s virtual spaces to the world of physical social space is the desire to connect physical and virtual spaces into a seamless experience. The physical architectural and urban spaces should increasingly become interfaces into the metaverse, so that virtual spaces can be experienced from within social settings and not only from the isolation of the individual home. Therefore, I foresee the metaverse not as a parallel world but as integrated with the city and thus impacting the design of the future city. 

h: Urbanism is closely related to architecture. Could you reflect a little bit on those urban principles that can emerge in the metaverse? How and by whom will they be formulated? How can the metaverse ‘environment’ be correlated with its architectural practices?

PS: For me, all the design disciplines form one integrated discourse and creative domain. This includes urban design, architectural design, interior design, furniture design, fashion design, graphic design, web design etc. Urbanism is fundamental, also in the metaverse. However, whole cities are rarely designed by a single hand. They are a cumulative patchwork of myriad urban and architectural design interventions contributed to by different designers. There is, however, or at least there should be, a prevailing professional culture and ethos that demands each architect to contribute not only to the creation of the immediate urban spaces but to do this in a way that is congenial with the larger character and identity of the district and city. Sometimes there are institutionalized processes of planning and vetting trying to cohere urban development. In the last 50 years these efforts have largely failed. They have been wholly incapable of establishing urban identities. On the other hand the vain attempt to impose order has stifled development and prevented the discovery process for co-location synergies that a free market could have delivered. Metaverse cities intend to cater for the very same motivation that brings people (organizations and individuals) to agglomerate in cities in the first place: co-location synergies. Metaverse cities will also have to cope with very similar urban governance challenges like physical cities (except everything can unfold faster and in a more light-footed way). The problem with most mature physical cities is that they are paralyzed with long-term incumbent vested interests that paralyze urban growth, densification, use conversions, and other vital adaptations. Nimbyism is endemic. In the metaverse cities are fresh entrepreneurial ventures, unencumbered by old, vested interests. This opens up an exciting domain of experimentation with respect to urban design and urban governance models. The latter aided by the flourishing governance discourse and new governance technologies emerging within the blockchain and crypto ecosystem of the metaverse is a crucial part of as ‘Web 3.0’ with its added attraction as a blockchain-enabled ‘internet of value’. My preference and recommendation to metaverses is to kick off with several parallel governance regimes and participation models simultaneously. The trade-off decisions and balance between degrees of control and degrees of freedom within a metaverse city do not have to be uniform across the whole city. 

h: Do you think the utilitarian limitations of the real world (which matter to architects in real life) will exist in the metaverse? If so, which ones? Might they be modified somehow?

PS: The ‘utilitarian limitations’ that bear on the design of the metaverse are the very same criteria as bear on the design of physical architectures and cities. As mentioned above the metaverse is part of the real world, of a single, continuous social reality and economy, and as such competes with and complements physical venues, i.e. I think of the metaverse primarily in utilitarian terms. This does not deny that it is also an engaging and stimulating experience. Being engaging and stimulating is indeed a vital part of the metaverse’s useful performances: this contributes rather than detracts from social communication and exchange. 

h: Could you reflect a little on how the inhabitants of the metaverse are perceived now and how they may be perceived by us in the future? As autonomous creatures or as a projection of people from the real world?

PS: In my conception of the metaverse, we are all its inhabitants, no more and no less than we are the inhabitants of our cities, except that our range of participation is enlarged and less restricted by distance. This latter means that we can expand our social circles. In fact we have already done this via social media. I believe that a consistent social identity as point of accountability across social domains and circles is expected and required in many important forms of social intercourse. The move away from anonymity to the use of true identities was also the general tendency in the progress of social media. The concept of pseudonymity offers an often viable in-between state of identity. A pseudonym can become a point of reference for a whole host of credentials and items of information without revealing the real name. Vitalik Buterin has recently mapped out a potential blockchain-based system that would allow personas leading a primarily digital life to collect verified credentials via so-called soulbound tokens. With respect to autonomous creatures, either in the form of non-player characters (NCPs), or as bots standing in for particular persons, I am a sceptic, albeit without wanting to exclude such devices altogether. NCPs might be helpful to visually animate otherwise empty scenes, or even to animate and teach real visitors by example. However, the risk is that bots become a problem, polluting and spreading mistrust within a metaverse. So, my preference would be if all participants join with their real identity. This is how I have so far always entered any metaverse. This does not preclude, as also continuously happens in physical city life notorious for its anonymity, playing with different modes of behaviour and self-expression in different places and social circles. However, it’s nice to know that the people one is encountering are real rather than fake. 

h: In the real world, society exists within ethical and aesthetic norms. In the metaverse, these norms are only being formulated. Perhaps they will even vary in different metaverses. How can this affect new architectural practices in virtual reality?

PS: I think it is important to distinguish current best practice ethical norms one should be able to presuppose universally in a globalized world from further elaborated, niche norms that develop in subcultures. These norms presuppose universal ethical standards, while imposing further behavioural expectations on all those who want to join a particular community or space. These particular subsidiary moralities might be quite diverse, and place-bound. Once you cross the threshold that separates this space from other spaces you subscribe, as it were, to the house rules that govern interactions and behaviours here, and you should be able to expect others to do the same. Architecture plays a major role in distributing and articulating these different social situations and their boundaries, as well as further sub-zones and thresholds within. All the above are equally important in physical and virtual cities and spaces. 

h: Can you tell us a little bit more about your recent projects in metaverse (like Liberland or your collaboration with the Refik Anadol Studio)? How did the ideas behind these projects arise? Did they come about because you felt certain restrictions in real life?

PS: It is true that I feel that there are too many politically imposed restrictions on architectural design and urban development. But the metaverse has an inherent interest as a design task and problem for me, independent of the issue of constraints. The metaverse is the future of the internet, and it is architects, rather than graphic designers, who will design its sites and spaces. Two powerful innovations are coming together in the metaverse we envision: the immersive internet allowing for a new level of life-like spontaneity in social interactions, and the internet of value allowing for truly global economic collaboration without gatekeepers, no matter which passport the participants hold. We conceive of the metaverse as an open platform, based on freely circulating open source insights and technologies, building on and participating in the culture of permissionless innovation that has fuelled the crypto ecosystem in recent years.

While the Liberland Metaverse is meant to spearhead the development of Liberland as a new country, it will also function as free standing virtual reality realm in its own right with the ambition to become the go-to-site for networking and collaboration within the burgeoning Web 3.0 industry, i.e. the metaverse for metaverse developers and the crypto ecosystem at large. The two communities – the community of libertarians who understand that the technology-powered prosperity potential of our times requires a revolution in the degree of entrepreneurial freedom and the community of blockchain-empowered Web 3.0 developers who realize that their amazing, innovative flourishing depends on a permissionless realm of interchange – are congenial and overlap to a significant degree. 

h: Do you feel the emergence of a new architectural school in the metaverse? Or is it too early to talk about this?

PS: It’s early days, but so far it is evident that the style of parametricism is gaining ground in the metaverse. As native digital-style parametricism is congenial with the ambitions of the metaverse and will become the preferred style here. This will feed back into architecture at large and accelerate the dissemination of parametricism. The advantages of a high-density, complex, variegated, legible spatio-morphological order and the requirement for continuous adaptation to changing contexts and interaction scenarios persist in the metaverse and can only be delivered by parametricism. I also foresee that parametricism will rapidly evolve new repertoires in the context of the metaverse, especially around the possibilities of real-time dynamic responsiveness and even spontaneous communicative movements and transformations.

h: Do you see an opportunity to segment this market? For example: urban projects, private, commercial clients, etc.

PS: Surely, the virtual real estate market will grow large and complex and we’ll see the specialization of various segments. We’ll see both the differentiation of function types like retail, work environments, entertainment, culture, education etc., as well as – in some of these segments – stratification in terms of price levels. I also see the possibility of a charitable sector and also a public sector on the horizon. 

h: For decades, architects have been speculating about the possibility of the emergence of ‘dynamic’ architecture, which independently changes according to the environment or human needs. The metaverse gives us a chance to implement this idea through artificial intelligence and algorithms. In this regard do you see an opportunity for the emergence of a completely new direction in architecture?

PS: I definitely see a strong developmental path here. This is taking interaction design to the next level. I call this the dimension of dramaturgy as a new task dimension for architectural and urban design, next to spatiology, phenomenology and semiology. AI-empowered architectural agents will emerge as active participants in the communication process, facilitating productive interactions. I also believe that some of this will then also feed back into physical architecture. I have been interested in the opportunity of responsive and then spontaneous environments for a long time. It’s high time that this opportunity for interactive spaces – based on the increasing availability of sensors, actuators, computation and machine learning – moves out of the experimental stage explored in art exhibitions into the real world of purposeful social functioning. The metaverse will give ample opportunities to think through and refine effective, life-enhancing dramaturgical designs.