The future of Architecture in Metaverse

Why do we want to talk about this topic? Why does architecture matter in Metaverse? And what are the impacts it will have on this world?

If you pay close enough attention, you will see that the real estate sales in Metaverse topped $500 million in 2021, and this number could double this year. Just like the real world, by building up the Metaverse, human beings are well prepared to build a virtual world full of possibilities for ourselves to explore and experience. 2021 has shown the world an urge to own virtual land, which proved the seriousness and belief in the prosperity of the Metaverse.

So, what is the first step of building a world where you can land?

Imagine Elon Musk takes his believers landing on Mars, the first step they need to do is to build places where they can stay, store materials, or do research. Clearly, when millions of dollars are spent on virtual lands, the next step is to develop on it, to build architectures.

Now, who is building the architectures on virtual lands now?

There are 3 types of people:

1. Game Builders. Some of them learned to develop 3D models while developing games
2. 3D artists. They have been trained professionally to build and render 3D objects, where building can be one type of 3D objects
3. Some of the traditional architects. They are not satisfied with the current industry situation and they learned 3D modeling tools to participate in gaming and movies

However, that’s not enough to build the whole virtual universe to a desired point where we can call it a legit world and spend a lot of our time in.

Now you must wonder, why don’t we reach out to billions of extraordinary architects in the traditional architecture world? Why don’t they see this huge opportunity?

Because the traditional industry needs education. We are making more and more people understand and see the opportunity so they can find a way to participate.

Before stepping into the future, I want to briefly talk about the current industry situation:

The ideal way for the glories old day architects is definitely to build their reputation with grand competitions and world-renown projects. This requires years of skill crafting, including strong art development and engineering background. Thus, the smartest and talented group of people get into architecture, devoting their dedication day and night to future masterpieces.

However, nowadays, most genius architects graduate to be hired as a cell of a corporation, what they are doing daily is to build part of similar type of projects. And because of the crazy iterations and the industry standard that requires contracts to go through 2D drawings, they work overtime with limited bonuses.

A straightforward comparison is between architects and software engineers. Both are geniuses, one spends 1 more year on avg than the other in college, end up half of the entry salary rate to another. Thus, many of the genius architectures self-taught and switched their whole career to become software engineers (including me).

The reality of life is cruel, the dream is important, but to live a decent life is a fundamental requirement to chase your dreams.

Now, what are the opportunities for architects in the Metaverse?

1. Start taking on Virtual Architecture projects in the industry. This takes a lot of courage to first throw yourself into a brand new industry, second to dedicate a lot of time learning new technologies and getting adapted to the new energy vibing in Web 3, it’s so different from the traditional one.
2. Join a team to build your own NFT projects. Looking at the current NFT market, I am sure so many folks are excited but just don’t know how to participate, and actually, the focus is mainly on JPEGs, virtual houses are rare now in the market. But I see it as a great opportunity to show the market some real values.
3. Team up with game developers to build a Metaverse development company. This can offer customized game design and functionalities all in one as a service and technology company. It’s a small-scale side, but definitely, a brand new way to combine the architecture world with the technology world.

Where to find customers? How to step over the technical obstacles?

This is the question I have been thinking about. There are two points that is obvious to me:

1. The market needs more visionary collectors and real metaverse users to engage
2. Architects need lots of education on technology, metaverse platforms, software, etc.

I see that there is not a marketplace for virtual architecture, this is a big market, I don’t think only OpenSea will be good enough. Plus, non of the current NFT marketplace have the capability to deal with 3D model NFTs properly now. It’s something new that we need to find out for architects.

Based on the difference of the current Metaverse platforms, and without a regulation standard, the file import process can be messy and the interoperability is significantly low. For example, if I bought a luxury beach virtual house, I may not be able to import into the Metaverse I want to due to the render issues, file format, file size, etc.

All of the above problems drive me to build this NFT marketplace specifically for 3D architecture models, Dolphin.

1. I want Dolphin to be able to achieve the education process by dedicating its resource to build a service DAO: Archiverse DAO. We already have 100+ architects joined to pursue future opportunities together.
2. I want Dolphin to test and show the market some really cool professional architecture pieces to show our value and prove to architects they deserve more.
3. I want Dolphin to use its own experience and strong resources in technology and metaverse to detect and aggregate the possible technical obstacles and offer an extremely easy solution for architects in our platform. They just need to focus on design and modeling, the rest will be carefully taken care of.

This industry is huge and the gate is open to everyone, I would love to see more and more architects start dedicating their time to take a look at the future. I also want more people to calm down and really see the future of the NFT market and how it can bring value to us.