Felipe Escudero, founder, and principal of Quito-based Estudio Felipe Escudero (EFE), has unveiled Crystal City, his latest metaverse design for LEDY, one of the discipline's leading developers, and Decent Amusements, the district manager. In addition to a high-rise observation deck, an ice-covered marketplace, and a packed snow gallery, this new metaverse destination will feature Decentraland's tallest multi-purpose tower, Crystal Tower.
Crystal City aims to break with the limitations of the contemporary physical world by defying gravity and material properties, and offering a transcendental and immersive experience that could not exist anywhere else but in the digital world. With around 6 hectares, the design by Ecuadorian architect Felipe Escudero will house offices, stores, galleries, and events.
The metaverse is a space where there are new opportunities for design. Here I can apply ideas that cannot exist in the real world, ideas that can provide inspiration and vision of what could be in the future, the physical world. - Felipe Escudero
Crystal Tower is the tallest central crystal-shaped metal tower in Decentraland, one of the largest and best-known metaverse platforms. This tower rises 167 meters and emerges upwards and outwards like a glacier, in all directions, rising from its iceberg bed with the observation deck surrounding one of its branches on the 16th floor. This platform will provide the possibility for companies, artists, and creators to rent space in the tower, the market, and also the event area at affordable prices when it is usually expensive to acquire a plot there. It should be noted that brands will also be able to rent open plots to develop their own structures.
Crystal City's design is intended to inspire wonder and spark creativity. It will be a major new landmark in the metaverse and, with new experiences and ongoing events, will become a destination for social interaction, discovery and exploration. - Mark D'Andrea, LEDY Co-Founder
The base of Crystal City consists of a large space for public events that is equivalent to the size of two soccer fields, resulting in approximately 11,113 square meters. This space features a series of cuts that resemble glacier crevasses and at its center, houses a 2-story high organic sculpture called GEM, designed by the same architect, which serves as a community gallery.
I am inspired by nature to create pieces that feel animated, as if they have a soul. - Felipe Escudero
Inside the public event space is a marketplace composed of a floor that resembles a thin layer of water and an ultra-thin roof of ice that floats like a spaceship. As the market is built and ascends with new spaces for its tenants, the ice on the roof will begin to melt, accommodating its growth and making reference to what is happening in the material world with glaciers melting in the face of industrial development, but avoiding generating consequences for the earth and its inhabitants.
Felipe Escudero will house a studio and gallery in a structure of his own that seeks to resemble a huge floating glacier near the towers. The OBIO gallery will exhibit recently launched OBIO projects that combine music and video with fashion and objects, so visitors can experience Felipe's work outside the Metaverse. It will be accessible by teleportation.
