ONLINE: JUNKSPACE OF THE 21ST CENTURY
"... a seamless patchwork of the permanently disjointed" - Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace
Rem Koolhaas describes junk space as the fuzzy mixture of spaces occupied by the masses that arose towards the end of the 20th century. These were the undefined spaces that people spent all their leisure time, a mess of spaces that one could walk into with no clearly defined goal of where they would end up. In today's society, this seems to me to define the online world. Everywhere you look, people are always on their phones. The space that defines someone's brand and identity is no longer physical, it is virtual. The internet has brought the onslaught of junkspace; the advertisements, the commercialization of the world being forced into your face, to a handheld device carried by billions of people. Junkspace has managed to become even more accessible, if not infectious, in a space that no longer needs defined walls.
But architecture and the built environment is persistent, and always finds a way to wiggle itself back into the conversation. Enter the metaverse, and virtual reality. When reading the news, and seeing commercials for VR headsets, it seems as though the tech world truly believes that this new virtual realm is the future, allowing people to create themselves within this world. What intrigues me is that this brings back defined spaces, although not physical. The virtual office space still has cubicles, still has conference rooms. In this future, the virtual world still needs to be defined, giving architects meaning. In this world, do architects role in society remain the same, or is it more or less important? What about engineers? Who will be the one to design this non physical, but still somehow physical world that we will soon be living in.
Distinguishing the metaverse from the rest of the internet because of its "built environment" is really interesting. To add to your list of questions about this virtual space I also wonder about the relationship between the architecture of the real world and the architecture of the virtual world. Will they evolve in a similar fashion, with the architecture of the metaverse mirroring our physical world? Will it be nostalgic with architectures that are fading out of style, like malls and private offices? Or will the metaverse develop an architecture of its own, unique from what could exist in the physical world?
ReplyDeleteThe Metaverse opens up a whole new universe of potential for architects. A universe where the only constraint is our own creativity. If we can dream it we can do it. I believe this is going to be terribly dangerous for us as a profession and for the people it affects. In a lot of ways, the built environment shapes the minds of those that occupy it. This new "built world" experienced only through the internet will entirely alter the way humans interact on a day to day basis and the way it is constructed will be a pivotal piece in shaping that interaction. The most impactful piece of the puzzle however, is that in a world free of constraints, our degrees and licenses mean nothing. Whoever learns to use the design software fastest will ultimately be the initial determinate of the built environment's fate in a virtual world.
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