The promise of the metaverse is proving to be a fertile ground for research and experimentation for architects. This new realm is currently undefined, consisting of many narratives, explorations, and opportunities for architects and designers to shape a new type of environment. Generative engines, such as AI image-generators, are contributing to the feeling of open possibilities. While they are not yet part of the standard practice, they bring the promise of a shift in the production of architecture. Conceptual projects such as the ones presented in this list serve little to no external purpose. Still, they are essential in conducting an understanding of the possibilities of the new technologies which are likely to have a significant effect on the profession.
This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by the ArchDaily community that experiment with a new medium and integrate novel technologies. From abstract buildings created to be experienced through virtual reality in the metaverse to investigations into the ability of AI image generator engines to develop innovative architectural expressions and even research into planimetry, the following projects are pushing the boundary of what architecture could look like in the new age of technological developments.
Read on to discover 8 projects created for the metaverse or designed using AI image-generating engines, along with their descriptions from the architects.
Meta City Hall
In this metaverse city of a digital imaginary world, we can get rid of the shackles of the real physical world and use the surreal oriental futuristic ideal to create a tree-like growing, continuous self-repaired and evolved living body, which meets the needs of digital residents. The Meta City Hall, designed by the CAA LAB led by architect Mr. Liu Haowei, was recently completed. The project is CAA LAB's first metaverse building completed in China and located in a creative utopia and a futuristic metaverse city – Meta City. It was created with the support of “Creator City,” a Metaverse product of Chinese tech giant Baidu. CAA's LAB team used the usual digital and surreal design methods to express an oriental romanticism architectural language and created this Meta City Hall called the "Tree of Life".
Exclusive Resort NFTs in the Metaverse
Our partners Extraverse have created a curated collection of ultra-exclusive resort NFTs that exist in the metaverse. Each resort comes with unparalleled artwork and its own unique backstory. CUUB team worked on creating visual art for location stories for Colony III, Rai Stone Reef, and Nyiragongo Crater Lodge. We designed the architecture, landscapes, environment, and visual language to tell the story of each location. Our main task was to create in animations and visualizations a well-designed environment based on human emotions, sensations, and connections with fantasy and dreamy locations.
Midjourney Experiments: Silk & Stone Baroque Façades
Mohammad Qasim Iqbal
This project explores the qualities and characteristics of Baroque facades. In collaboration with Midjourney I developed a series of images that conceptualize stone Baroque façades intertwined with the fabric of silk. This façade study merged the stone and fabric of silk together to stitch a contemporary version of the Baroque façade. The merging creates a blurring of materials and encourages the viewer to look closely before they can distinguish between stone and silk. You are encouraged to really see the architecture and explore it and all its parts while also taking in the whole. The work pushes the ideal of the Architects ability to see and not just look.
Super Fiction Toilet
What is true luxury in the metaverse? - Super Fiction Toilet is the first public toilet in the metaverse while the toilet itself is the most unnecessary thing in the metaverse. The collector of the toilet owns a right to physically build it in the city in the each NFT’s title. SFT transcends the duality of fiction and reality, and gets us closer to Super Fiction.
Archi-creature
Objects Design Studio
The upcoming collection is a research - imaginative about a kind of future in which architecture, Buildings, and the world - instead of physical understanding - are based on a deep biological understanding, and architecture and buildings, above all, are produced from that and knowledge of live or semi-alive creatures that the main their structure or infra-structure, even whole body of the building shaped by that and practically "human living" will be change from living in the silent objects to a co-existing with and inside of alive creatures as "inhabitable creatures.”
Chaos + Regeneration in Architecture Film
Architects have to transcend chaos to generate incredible architecture. This is no small task, and why many can find practicing architecture overwhelming at times. David Mead explores this idea in ‘Chaos + Regeneration’ using imagery generated with artificial intelligence (AI). Utilizing Midjourney as an AI tool, the film explores the choices architects face when acting on the climate crisis and outlines solutions any project can choose.
An Experimental Approach to Designing Architecture with AI
Karen Al Asmar
This project targets the need to integrate lateral thinking strategies in computational architecture tools. It argues that today’s computational tools that lack these specific qualities could benefit from embedding Artificial Intelligence at the early stages in the architectural design process as a method to re-establish grounds for experimentation in our tools and processes. The project proposes a new AI-driven tool pipeline that uses Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) as an experimentation ground. Specifically, it explores the ability to access the latent space of a machine and use this space and its properties as a digital environment to design in.
FEVER
FEVER is a fly-through rendering of an imaginary social space in Soho, London, which debuted at the London Design Festival. As populated as London is, it can be terribly lonely, but what if we could connect people by giving them something beautiful that they naturally gather around. The multi-programatic aggregation of space, coupled with a flow of events, shrinks the threshold between stranger & friend, prompting interaction through design. People enter as strangers & leave as something, anything, else.
HOW TO SUBMIT AN UNBUILT PROJECT
We highly appreciate the input from our readers and are always happy to see more projects designed by them. If you have an Unbuilt project to submit, click here and follow the guidelines. Our curators will review your submission and get back to you in case it is selected for a feature.
