The Alexander Team and metaverse real estate development firm Everyrealm, have announced the launch of "The Row", a private, members-only metaverse real estate community featuring architecture designed by world-renowned artists. The Row will be launched on the metaverse world-building platform Mona, and will feature limited-edition series of 30 3D architectural landmarks, each sold as a 1-of-1 non-fungible token (NFT) designed by artists including Daniel Arsham, Misha Kahn, Andrés Reisinger, Alexis Christodoulou, Six N. Five, and Hard.
The artists will design and build each of the Row’s landmarks with the ability to be deployed across a variety of metaverse platforms within The Row district. Membership to The Row is by invitation only and will become available once the project has completed development later this year. The Alexander Team and Everyrealm first announced their plan to co-develop an architecturally-significant community back in December 2021, with the aim of offering their clientele, who already "collect trophy real estate" in the real world, the ability to do so at that same level of curation in the metaverse.
The metaverse has no physics, no weather, and no limitations other than human ingenuity. The Row brings together visionary artists best known for their architectural landscapes and collectors seeking a unique, limited edition residence that they can deploy across many different metaverses over time. -- Janine Yorio, CEO, Everyrealm
Architecture and sculpture have played a prominent part in Daniel Arsham’s "uchronic" digital creations, as seen in The Ares House. In The Row, the sculpture of Ares is scaled monumentally to the extent where it could be inhabited. As its exterior informs the color palette of the interior, Arsham created five different variations of The Ares House, all of which hold a unique crystal property: amethyst, quartz, pyrite, and volcanic ash, intended to provoke thoughts about age and time. As visitors enter through the base of the pedestal into a large foyer and up the large staircase, other sculptures are presented.
As the metaverse develops, I can imagine these pieces of architecture being constructed as incredible places to inhabit. In the initial versions, I've placed my own artwork in the space, but one could imagine a collector placing artworks from other digitally native artists or works from artists who create primarily in the physical world. I’ve created very accurate visualizations of how this work might exist, how you might move through it, how light passes through it, and what it might feel like at different times of day. It’s really a magical way to create architecture in the metaverse -- Daniel Arsham, designer and Everyrealm’s Creative Ambassador.
Alexis Christodoulou Studio's The Mirage is the metaverse's first personal levitation center, designed for enjoyment and spiritual transition into the digital realm. Built around the contradiction of gravity through various points of the day, each edition of the project exhibits a unique tone to mimic the position of the sun as it floats above.
Misha Kahn gave room for the "illogical and the irreverent" to define his project, employing lo-fi and ad hoc techniques, improvisational molds, collages, and virtual reality. Kahn’s Quagmire’s Karst, originally realized as ceramic objects, is inspired by how people define space in the digital world, using grids to create depth in an environment that is yet to be understood.
Andrés Reisinger presented a "visual manifesto on the digital form of architecture". The project explores the challenges of traditional architecture and its permanence in the face of the metaverse. Free from most spatial concerns, Reisinger’s virtual house prevents "meaninglessness, boredom, existential dread and emptiness" by introducing stimulating conditions such as the spatiality, the atmosphere, and the architecture of the project.
Six N. Five’s Make Room for Us is an architectural project that adapts architecture to nature by speaking of repentance and forgiveness for the damage the physical world has endured. Through adaptive designs that mimic cellular organisms, the firm proposed an architectural system that interacts with nature in an imaginary ecosystem of cliffs, mountains, and virtual dreamscapes in the form of a narrative translated into visual concepts.
Hard.Architects’ contribution to The Row was inspired by the "introspective journey that explores the lust for opulence that resides in self-worth and the need for belonging". The visual is a critique against the desire for the epicurean lifestyle, using a pearl in its purest form to evoke the standards for the metaverse through its simplicity and elegance.
