A new place for design - State of Address (SOFA) - is a world-first design community on the blockchain, shifting how design and architecture is made, owned and collected.
Founded by four Melbourne entrepreneurs - Chris Stribley, Domenic Cerantonio, AJ Batra and Anmol Sekhon - SOFA uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to turn products of architecture and design into tokenized and investable assets that are unique, scarce, and transferable. All of which provide a plethora of digital and physical utility and have the potential to be on-sold for longer term gain.
Right now, the costs for individuals and communities to engage architects are high and out of arm’s reach for the average person or community. Yet, some would argue good architecturally designed spaces (physical and virtual) have never been so important in our lives.
By using NFTs, SOFA sets out to democratize architectural designs and decrease the prohibitive costs of entrance to the end consumer by allowing them access to own one of a limited collection of architectural designs, whilst at the same time it enables designers, both emerging and established, to spread their production costs across the limited series and further receive royalties in perpetuity for good design.
Dom Cerantonio, renowned architect and co-founder of SOFA explains:
“In Australia, only 2% of all new homes between 2012-2021 were designed by architects - we hope that by reducing the cost to the end-customer, we can increase this statistic and improve the standard of living through better designing buildings and environments.
With SOFA, prospective buyers will be able to shop through various design pieces till they find what they are looking for, purchase instantly and at a fraction of the cost. Not only will architects and designers recoup their initial costs via the sale of the NFTs but then also receive royalties in perpetuity any time that design is resold in the future – creating a whole new economic model for them.”
While the launch of SOFA signifies a new wave in architecture and design for our physical environments, it equally opens a world of possibilities for the digital space, changing the way we interact both socially and professionally.
Anmol Sekhon, blockchain specialist and co-founder of SOFA says: “While it’s clear the ‘in real life’ benefits SOFA can offer, what’s equally exciting is the untapped market opportunity for the digital spaces we’re all becoming accustomed to.
Each SOFA NFT aims to provide unique digital immersive environments that could be utilized in various mediums. Think – VR based experiences and events to building the designs in metaverses such as Sandbox or Decentraland - the opportunities are endless.”
How does it work?
SOFA launched its ‘membership pass’ on February 27, where aside from being a limited community of 1,000 people, it provides members the exclusive ability to purchase new architectural design collections before they are released prior to the public markets. SOFA ‘members’ also receive VIP invites to its design and community events, including behind the scenes content and the SOFA ‘Ask Me Anything’ series.
The below diagram showcases how SOFA works and the value to its community.
For further details on the ‘membership pass’ visit s-of-a.io.
Collaborating Architects and Example Architectural NFT
SOFA has released their first architectural NFT, a residential home designed by highly-renowned Australian firm, Cera Stribley.
The home design is intentionally minimal and restrained to appeal to a wider audience, allowing it to be easily applied to many environments and locations around the world.
By releasing this ‘example’ first edition architectural NFT free to the general public, SOFA hopes to demonstrate the power of fractionalizing architectural designs before moving on to more exploratory and exciting projects.
Each SOFA NFT collection (released monthly commencing in May), will feature 3 x designs – one each from an emerging, hero and legend architect of the industry. It has announced that in its first NFT collection, the ‘emerging’ spot will be taken by coveted designer Marshall Blecher.
SOFA will announce the selection for the ‘Hero’ architect in the coming week. As the community grows, it plans to be the leading partner for architects and designers seeking to tokenize their designs and provide utility for digital metaverse applications.
To learn more or express your interest as a collaborator for a future collection, please visit www.s-of-a.io.
