When space becomes computable and computers become habitable
Young architects can change the world by not building buildings.
Virgil Abloh (1980-2021)
The convergence of virtual reality, blockchain and artificial intelligence has allowed for a new ontology of space to emerge. A space that is both computable - produces datasets that can feed into computing operations - and that itself has the ability to compute - a space that can take data and run operations in and on itself. I will refer to this computing space as the metaverse or Web3 indifferently, and will argue that architects need to become coders if they want to have a future role as active designers and builders of such emerging new computing spaces.
Up until now, the relationship between the metaverse and architecture has occurred mostly at the aesthetic level, and only within the context of virtual reality. Little discussion about the potential implications of blockchain beyond the visual has been explored by architects. Despite the explosion of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) linked to digital art, the vast majority of these tokens are being used uniquely as a quick and easy monetization tool. Artists, and who can blame them, have jumped on the NFT bandwagon to promote and monetize their art, with very few fully exploring this new technology.
In architecture specifically, implementations of the blockchain and NFTs have also been literal at most. The recent show “Proof of Stake - Technological Claims” at the Kunstverein Museum in Hamburg, Germany, this November is a good example of the superficial level at which these explorations operate. Despite ambitious intentions, participating artists embraced blockchain with a fascination that is both naive and dated. Participating British artist Simon Denny - well known for his work with AI - minted NFT-representations of specific objects, and gifted them to participants as partial compensation for their work. His performance felt flat of cultural commentary, and reminisced of antiquated “how-to” explainers of the technology.
In the meantime, a much more exciting conversation is happening in between video games and crypto trades, in garages across the world, powered by blockchain mining operations, run by cybernetic anarchists, libertarian activists, opportunistic gold-diggers and gamblers, anonymous artists, and Silicon Valley converts.
A chain of padlocks placed across the entranceway to the exhibition Proof-of-Stake by Yuri Pattison’s “Lockchain“ (2021). The chain acts as a material analogue to cryptographic keys while alluding to restrictive access to cultural spaces.
The conversation is taking place within and about the metaverse, the new incarnation of the internet realized through the growth and convergence of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), advanced networking (e.g., 5G), geolocation, IoT devices and sensors, distributed ledger technology (e.g., blockchain), and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).
The conversation within the metaverse is equally at ease discussing technical algorithms, philosophical and phenomenological questions, and political systems. Within the metaverse, it all comes together in one of the best contemporary examples of cultural project versus practice, carrying profound philosophical, ontological, and aesthetic consequences.
There is still no universally accepted definition of the metaverse, except maybe that it is a fancier successor to the mobile internet. Silicon Valley metaverse proponents sometimes reference a description from venture capitalist Matthew Ball: