Morning Routine from the Future
In a dark boxy room surrounded by immersive screens, the alarm goes on. It projects all over the walls a rustic farmhouse in the rural countryside and a rooster crowing “cock-a-doodle-doo”. It is a new morning. You have to trust the screens that it is. There’s no other way to tell, no window, no morning sun rays or cold breeze, just an alarm clock and an e-rooster. In what feels like a robotic response to the sound, you slowly get out of bed. You enter the bathroom and stand in front of a hi-tech mirror, gesturing to it to play some tunes, while a slot in the wall squeezes neon green toothpaste on your toothbrush. As you brush your teeth, your heart rate and health data appear in the mirror in front of you with the latest news headlines.
This is what a regular morning routine looks like in the opening scene of the “Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits” episode, a Netflix sci-fi series exploring the twisted, high-tech near-future. In theory, what I described as a sci-fi house is unlike anything anyone wants their future home to be. It might sound like a grim view, but if we take a look at our lives right now, we would notice that we’re not far off from this dark depiction of this possible reality.
An Increasingly Digital Reality
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average American spends 93% of their life indoors. 87% of their life is inside buildings, then another 6% of their life in automobiles (Brain Post: How Much Time Does the Average American Spend Outdoors? – SnowBrains, 2021). The average person spends a little above 5 hours daily on their mobile phones. (G., 2021) About 80% of Americans say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up. (Wheelwright, 2021) So according to the stats, we already spend most of our time indoors facing screens. But how does this increasingly tech-enabled lifestyle affect the way we shape our future dwellings?
We all share similar physical constraints: the vast universe, Earth, and even our human bodies. Once we learned that we could shape our surrounding environments, we did. We altered them to shield ourselves from the environment to create structures like tents leading to skyscrapers. We built systems that helped us move and live comfortably. At best, in a more meaningful manner. At worst, a destructive one. But “The way we look at…architecture…is still very much tied to physical reality,” (Carlson, 2021)
New ways are emerging to extend our reality, and it is not some sci-fi movie, it’s very much real. “Digital has allowed the development of new forms of architecture and allowed us to push the boundaries of the profession without the constraints of gravity, finance, and administration. We can therefore give free rein to our imagination, thinking and creating the wildest dreams that take shape in our heads.” (Fairs, 2021)
Immersive Tech & the Design Process
Incorporating virtual reality into the design process can be immensely helpful as it bridges the communication gap between architects and clients. When non-designers are fully immersed in the digitally simulated environment, they have a better understanding of the quality of space, function distribution, use of material and furniture, etc. It’s fairly easy to detect flaws in the design that you could not possibly see on plans. The experience may be only surpassed by the same size models. But physical models are time-consuming and the bigger they get, the more space and budget they require.
In addition to being inside the 3D model of a space, immersive technology provides an extra feature that is impossible to replicate in physical models or 2D renderings: interactivity. Think of it as a mix of graphics, lightning simulation at different times of the day, and opening doors and moving things around – just like video games (Hobson, 2021). And the best thing is that it’s all happening in real-time via powerful 3D engines. It becomes so easy to place a carpet in the room or change the material of the outdoor patio…etc. The possibilities to experiment with the designs are endless. And for the first time, non-designers are as much on board as architects (Fairs, 2021).
In the future, it is expected that every architecture practice will make use of VR to the extent of having a dedicated empty room for it. Immersive technology presents an opportunity to understand architects and communicate effectively. Tech advancements in extended realities are democratizing architecture into a language that people could understand.
Immersive Tech & the Resulting Experience
Priced at a little over half a million dollars, ‘Mars House’ was the first digital home to be sold on the NFT marketplace SuperRare. NFTs, short for non-fungible tokens, act as digital certificates of ownership on blockchain technology and enable digital artworks or designs to be bought, sold, and collected. The Toronto-based artist Krista Kim intended for the house to be a ‘light sculpture’ that is best experienced in virtual reality with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and melancholic mountain views. It can also be ‘overlaid onto the real world’ using augmented reality (Parkes, 2021). But it’s not just this house, many artists and designers are turning to NFT marketplaces to sell their virtual furniture, clothes, and even entire buildings. It is providing a new business model that was once limited to physical products only. (Carlson, 2021)
If in the future, we are set to live between digital and physical realms, we will want to have nice furniture to flex to our avatar friends in our virtual home. Using your headset, you will be able to escape your unflattering room and enjoy a yoga session on the rooftop of a cliff house with waterfalls underneath. It can be enjoyable to escape reality every once in and while especially for people with restricted mobility. And if you think this is too futuristic, Dezeen, a design magazine, has an invitation-only club where they do online meet-ups on a ‘virtual roof-top bar’ and members come as dwarfish pixelated avatars. What once was architecture made of concrete, wood, and steel to provide a shelter for human beings has now become something entirely different. And we are still discovering the future of digital spaces.
Seeking Freedom
It is one thing to understand the future of immersive technology, but it’s another thing to understand the ‘why’ behind it. Beyond all materialistic limitations, our minds roam free, aching for what’s ‘beyond’. Our emotions are boundless. We are constantly trying to extend realities in ways that have never existed; stretching the extremities of creation to fit our limitlessness.
We crave freedom. Freedom to wear whatever we want, to fly above ancient castles, to go back in time, to discover new worlds, …freedom to escape our crippling earthly constraints and place ourselves in worlds of our imagination.
Reference List:
SnowBrains. 2021. Brain Post: How Much Time Does the Average American Spend Outdoors? – SnowBrains. [online] Available at: <https://snowbrains.com/brain-post-much-time-average-american-spend-outdoors/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Environmental%20Protection,one%20day%20per%20week%20outdoors.> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
G., D., 2021. How Much Time Does The Average American Spend On Their Phone?. [online] TechJury. Available at: <https://techjury.net/blog/how-much-time-does-the-average-american-spend-on-their-phone/#:~:text=3.-,Americans%20spend%20an%20average%20screen%20time%20of,on%20their%20mobile%20phones%20daily.&text=According%20to%20screen%20time%20stats,daily%20on%20their%20mobile%20phones.> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Wheelwright, T., 2021. Cell Phone Behavior Survey: Are People Addicted to Their Phones?. [online] reviews.org. Available at: <https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/#:~:text=83%25%20of%20Americans%20use%20their,10%20minutes%20of%20waking%20up.> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Carlson, C., 2021. Metaverse will let you “extend your body into architecture” says Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2021/04/09/metaverse-meet-up-dezeen-club/> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Fairs, M., 2021. “The virtual world is taking over the real world,” says Anthony Authié. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2021/04/03/anthony-authie-zyva-studio-launches-architoys-nft-auction/> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Hobson, B., 2021. Virtual reality will allow architects to “change the world like a god”. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2015/07/21/movie-virtual-reality-oculus-rift-allow-architects-change-world-like-god-olivier-demangel/> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Parkes, J., 2021. Artist Krista Kim sells “first NFT digital house” for over $500,000. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2021/03/22/mars-house-krista-kim-nft-news/> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
Images:
Sundriyal, D., 2018. Black Mirror. [image] Available at: <https://thecinemaholic.com/best-daniel-kaluuya-movies-tv-shows/2/> [Accessed 26 June 2021].
©Krista Kim
©Barbara Zandoval via Unsplash
Unsplash.com. 2021. Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash. [online] Available at: <https://unsplash.com/photos/Dz5j0QKVUGY> [Accessed 27 June 2021].
