Dezact Metaplay II
Metaplay II was a workshop organised by the great team at Dezact held during June 2022 focusing on architectural design tools for the Metaverse. Various modelling techniques were explored as a means for design generation with two end goals in mind: 1) prepare the students’ technical capabilities for an upcoming subsequent design studio workshop; and 2) generate results results that were presented at a jury and will be stored at a metaverse museum.
I participated as a technical tutor that taught students how to use Blender, with over 9 hours of intensive training, focussing on getting from the most basic skills to content as pictured below:
The topic of the Meteverse and designing for the metaverse is rather unexplored by me thus far, but during the critique final presentation, it became clear that designing for a different world is the same as designing for our world - there is a brief, users, and a concept that explores how to meet the brief in the best possible way for the users. Metaverse also contains some rather interesting possibilities, where users and constraints do not need to be bound by human abilities (or lack thereof) and by earth constraints (gravity, atmosphere, etc). As such, users could, for example fly into their spaces, so the experience of space, approach, entrance is quite different, where more emphasis could be placed on what the users see and experience the most.
Students learned how to model complex geometry in Blender, Maya, and Rhino that was then imported into Unreal for further processing. Working in groups, the students produced narrative for their users and the world they occupy that they used in tandem with the modelling techniques taught to create a design proposal. The final output included an animation/walktrhough/flytrhough through their proposals.
Here are some snapshots from the movies of their work.
From July to August, most of the student groups will continue for an 8 week intensive workshop. The students are usually 3rd, 4th, or 5th year undergraduate architecture students, looking to gain skills and expertise necessary for potential graduate school applications. They typically target the AA, Bartlett, GSD, MIT, GSAPP, SCI-ARC, and other similar architectural education institutions. I am really looking forward to teach a studio unit again this year. Here are some examples from last year’s students:
