How Do Architects Design Metaverse Experiences?

With all the recent hype over immersive storytelling, looking at how brands put together production teams, I was wondering how do architects design metaverse experiences?

From a visual storytelling perspective I find this question as a fascinating illustration of how skills get adapted around emerging technologies.

Since the metaverse broke out a year ago, we’ve seen many brands start their own immersive Web3 experiences across various sectors such as virtual real estate,  fashion and beauty, art, CPG, hospitality, sportswear, and music – to name a few.

As brands put together cross-functional teams to build these branded virtual worlds either on major gaming platforms or on their own Websites, architects have played a key role, bringing their expertise in visualizing 3D structures from the physical world.

However there is one big difference.

On the metaverse, architects design virtual buildings with minimal physical constraints.

As such architects follow video game designers and dream up rich fantasy structures that bring to life the creator’s vision for identity, community and utility.

I was intrigued by the unique journey architects have gone through bringing their deep visual storytelling skills from designing buildings in the real world to – practically – blank canvas immersive experiences and digital twins in the metaverse.

It’s like a 3D building rendering that in the past was only used for planning and simulation purposes, has now found a new use case in the metaverse.

What is Visual Storytelling from
an architect’s perspective?

“It’s about presenting ideas visually, while taking your audience on a journey. It has to be something that they can relate to, it should have depth and it’s also good if it makes them smile.”

-Nicola Rutt
Founding Director
Studio MULTI

To help me unpack this exciting topic I had the great pleasure to speak with Nicola Rutt, Founding Director of Studio MULTI – a multiple perspective architecture firm based in London.

Demo video of The Immersive Kind gallery

Nicola and her team have recently designed The Immersive Kind virtual art gallery (click to experience it yourself) on the Spatial metaverse platform.

Kadine James, the CEO and Founder of The Immersive Kind, said the collaboration has created an “incredible piece of industrial architecture.”

We talked about her career journey, her process for designing a metaverse experience, challenges, project examples, misconceptions, future predictions, her top 3 tips for brands that are looking to develop their own metaverse experiences – and much more.

It’s all in the latest episode of the Visual Storytelling Today podcast.

Watch the full video recording of this interview with lots of illustrative examples:

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What immersive stories would you have an architect help you bring to life?