ELECTIVE- ARCHITECTURAL WRITING

METAVERSE 1.1

Abstract
Its been years since the covid pandemic hit the world, and its residents are moving on to virtual reality -
the metaverse. Metaverse[1] is a virtual simulation of the real world which mimics everyday life and
happenings in the urban environment coded with perfection to eliminate vices of human behaviour,
Metaverse is a product of algorithm changing environments to suit the user interacting with it, The
predictability of architecture through coded environments and planned surveillance makes the metaverse
a thriving place of secure neighbourhoods for settling down. There are multiple metaverses with interlink
with each other correlating to different cities. The story is a nostalgic conversation between the mother
who lived her life in the pre metaverse age and the daughter who is born in the upcoming times. The
mother narrates her experiences living in the real world and how architecture has shaped her identity. The
daughter is curious to explore and compare the two worlds time travels to the past to experience the
urban fabric of her mother’s neighbourhood compared with the built environment she has grown up in. On
her journey, she finds remarkable differences in her association with the built environment of the
metaverse’s version and the actual city. She finds that her tech palace is flawed even though its purpose
is to control and streamline activity and the building. She finds her way back home with a strong purpose
to be the future of change to make a more inclusive humanized version of the cities we live in. The story
plays around the narrative of an imagined reality of the future and fantasy.

It has been 70 years since the lockdown struck the planet earth. The world isn't real anymore. People
along with places have been changing in sync. It's the year of the metaverse- a virtual world designed to
replicate everything human to its touch and feel. The world has evolved into accommodating in multi-
metaverse- cities of a new imagination-a complete new way of living. It all started when technological
inventions edged out bureaucracy and standard traditional practices of living, governance, education,
employment, healthcare and other aspects of subsistence. The global population has found its way into
existing in these crafted simulated worlds rather than reality. Everything is articulated to match the most
conducive sensitive environments to live in there is no crime, robbery, peerage, or pollution- all problems
an everyday urban city faces. The predictability of architecture through coded environments and planned
surveillance makes the metaverse a thriving place of secure neighbourhoods for settling down. These
places have everything reimagined- controlled waterfront areas, offices on hilltops, homes ranging from
apartments to countryside bungalows in the same lane, aerial railway service and restaurants in a tiny
pod. The fun of these cities- a universe on whole- can change according to themes.

Riya is one of the residents of such a city. Riya lives on the 90th floor of a thinly expanded metal giant of a
building, with her parents. Riya has always been a curious kid with her room looking like the inside of a
spaceship- with monitors plastered onto the wall, and her artworks floating up to the ceilings of the virtual
world. Riya is too attached to her mother Anju. Her recent discovery over the internet has been the 2019
COVID pandemic. She runs to her mother who is standing in the kitchen. The kitchen of the metaverse is
revolutionarily different from the traditional kitchens of India. The metaverse works on the concept of
community kitchens specially designed for cooking, growing and delivering food to its residents. Her
mother quickly taps a few buttons on the kitchen counter and the dishware pops up. The window opens
up to a drone delivering Riya’s breakfast- Idli and Sambar. Her mother had automated the recipe of her
mother, back when she was living in a typical South Indian family of Mangalore. Riya jumping with
excitement questions the mom about her new finding “What happened to the verse you lived in when you
were of my age?” As the whirring sound of the buttons zooming up faded, Anju’s mind disappeared into
deep nostalgia. Anju came from the back beyond chawls in Mumbai. Her family lived hand to mouth to
survive in this overly populated city. Metaverse had bought in impenetrable privacy something all Indian
cities are devoid of. She had grown up living with people from all walks of life and sharing came easy.
Ownership was public. The common balconies of the chawl were where she played games with the street
kids and celebrated every festival. The courtyard in the plot was a place of memory where she would wait
for her father to come home after a long tiring day's end of work. She had sneaked her first boyfriend to
the terrace of this building, flew kites in the summer, and gossiped all day long with her grandmother
drying pickles.”

“Mom?” Riya snaps Anju back to reality. “Yes, yes!” Anju and Riya follow up to the living room. She halts
in the hallway and presses obscure buttons where a digitalized screen of various customizable options is
in the living room. Various options from sofa set to recliners and mood lighting pop up on the screen. The
living room transforms into Anju’s manifestation of the interiors. Anju places a window right overlooking
the simulated beach and draws the curtain. With her hands fumbling on the idli plate, Riya proceeds to sit
on the sofa set. “It all began when a pandemic- a virus outbreak hit the earth. People were forced into
isolation and quarantine to prevent the spread of the life-threatening disease. Controversies suggested it
to be biological. The Bombay plague of our times changed how we lived and the built around us, but this
pandemic was something bigger, and globalization lead to mass suffering. International economies
collapsed. School ran out of children and offices were out of people. Poverty, Homelessness and disease
struck every country. Capitalist governments couldn't handle the footfall of this calamity to the extent basic
amenities were hard to provide. The problem lies in human nature innately, with corruption, bureaucracy
and criminality found in every nook and corner. The internet was the place for communities to gather and
fight for their survival. Big Network corporations like Facebook, and Twitter took over this responsibility.
They started as social media giants but ended up creating built and unbuilt ones. Real and imaginary
spaces for everyone. That's the birthplace of Metaverse 1.1”

Riya starts to question her existence now. “Are all my memories, and associations with this place even
real?” “Yes they are real, just they are temporary,” says her mother frantically. “Architecture is the physical
manifestation of what you interact with. You are interacting with this world, you are living and breathing
through it, and every second of your time, this environment stimulates you. It is real, just that it conforms
to your mind’s imagination” Riya tries to make sense of her mother’s perspective but can't help feeling
cheated out of childhood. Would it have been any better if she existed in a different time frame
altogether? Does extreme planning of our surroundings inhibit our curiosity of discovery? Does it swindle
out of time- the mundanity and slowness of experimental findings through our subconscious minds? All
she wanted to know was more. How is the metaverse any different from the world her mother lived in? All
present phenomena come from some lessons of history that her professor had taught her in school.
Intrigued to know more, Riya packs her bag to observe her surroundings with a lens in her mind.

Riya gets out of her house to find herself in a big glass elevator. This lift moves in all directions- vertical,
horizontal and even diagonally. The best place to start is the town library. The library of Anju's time was
very different. With limited resources and few books in their rumpled form, it was the place to find some
quiet. However, Riyas' idea of a library is radically different. She finds the elevator speeding at top speed
to the library which is a huge glass curtain-walled building. All buildings in the metaverse are glass to
ensure maximum surveillance and the surveillance is through digitized mechanical mediums. There is a
constant feeling of being watched here, Riya doesn't care but she lives in fear of getting accused of doing
something wrong where her conscience won't be able to prove it. The glass box juts out horizontally with
extending balconies and a huge central atrium. She logs in her credentials into the system reception
monitored by robots. The looby leads her to a heightened circular space almost like an oculus where
virtual holograms of books appear to be surrounding her. The library was a search engine- a warehouse
of information. Just like the olden days of google search, a click on the walls could transport you into a
physical space of that time and origin. Interactive time machines made places far away and inaccessible
to near. Riya enabled the voice search to “Mumbai 2020”. Like Alice in Wonderland, she steps into the
hologram mimicking Mumbai’s identity. Riya goes down to the deep valley and finds herself peeping
through the windows of the locals. The train just rides off its vertical grid and halts at Dadar, the prime
location of the island city. She steps out invisibly. The flower market is bustling with people, it's a bright
Sunday morning indeed. Men crowd around vegetable sellers to get the best deal, ladies threading
flowers into garlands, children playing on the street, Cows stationed nearby a temple and hawkers selling
everything under the sun- from crockeries to clothes. Riya had never experienced chaos in a metaverse
city, she found it abnormally difficult to find her way to her mom’s house. Cars honked, two-wheelers
broke all the signals, and people laughed. The city worked on its own time. It seemed like everybody in
this city had an agenda and was on a mission to get through the day. Chowks were a primary point of
attraction as they played an important role in diverting the city's traffic and regulating the flow of
pedestrians. People knew their city well and had some sort of belonging attached to the physical entities
of architecture. Riya, so used to logging her identity at various public stations of the metaverse, was
surprised at how people knew each other, how they conversed as if they were an extension of their own
families, and the city functioned on trust and respect. Most importantly- on being accommodative.

She finds herself escaping the bazaars to Shivaji Park where her mother used to live. The park looked
glorious in its being. The sense of community is derived from the fact that the families inhabiting the
neighbourhood have mostly stayed back for ages. Inhabited by all Art Deco buildings with balconies
overlooking the ground and terraces with intricate grillwork she could picture what her mother was trying
to say. Each of these buildings had a narrow street leading to different crossroads and main roads making
it a place of privacy yet public because of the residential nature of the place. Informal surveillance was
given leverage over formal surveillance, unlike the metaverse. It was a less intimidating place to be for
Riya. She understands architecture isn't just buildings but more tangible spaces for storytelling to happen.
Each interaction has a background, and a story to tell and architecture helps to build a symbolic marker
for it. You can mimic the built environment but never the possibilities of engagement with it. Predictions
can be made but they can assure you how the perception of that space will be. People's periodic
participation helps to determine if that space is received positively or negatively.

Riya loses track of time and zips back to reality in her metaverse. She starts to see Metaverse built and
unbuilt with a new sight. Metaverse did have long lush playgrounds, but they were forced. They felt
restrained because activities were planned, and lacked human presence. The world was exclusively
designed to engage with mechanized robots and not with humans. The houses she lived in were
self-sufficient while they promptly managed waste and she didn't have to lift a finger to transport, cook, or
clean, it felt like she was living in a Toyland. Places to dwell, learn and grow need to change with time,
with each layer of new storytelling painted on them. Metaverse’s architecture lacked that exact
experiential quality. Metaverse functioned like a magic wand creating architecture of vivid imagination but
devoid of the body over the skeleton. Metaverse’s cities did boost the economy through rapid
technological advances- in transit, efficient public systems and monitoring, and conservation of factors of
human survival. Metaverse is devoid of educating people occupying the space of its spatial links of race,
gender, identity and ideology while creating environments characterless, with issues of privacy,
cyberbullying, security, and other mental health problems of being constantly exposed to media. Riya
understands the best of both worlds and plans to be the future architect. Air hangars are the new auto
stands, as she summons one, the air carrier lifts her back to the door of her room. She dials up her school
friend as she turns to her bedroom wall which has transformed into a video conferencing screen to talk
about her experience of time travel. “Where were you for so long Riya? Her mother intercepts. Anju was
worried about Riya’s missing GPS tracking location. She had called the central police station- a watch
tower - so high to get a whole view of the city at once at metaverse. “Internet changed the world, mom-
Just got click baited” Riya slyly remarks

Reference
[1] https://about.facebook.com/