The history of architecture, understood as the art of design and construction, has since ancient times been linked to the physical plane of reality. To paraphrase the Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas, if we represented architecture as a human figure, we would obtain a divided body in which one of its parts would encompass a primitive world from more than three thousand years ago and the other a world from this century. And at this intermediate point, between the past and the future, between memory and projection, is where architecture is located. But what would happen if we turned our gaze to a future in which we, the architects, designed outside the physical plane?

We’ve been talking about the digitisation of our industry for a long time. Current technology allows us to shape our projects before they are built, studying every detail and showing our clients what their future buildings will look like. But now, a new path is opening up that places the architect before a new paradigm as creators of digital content, where virtual and augmented reality give rise to an extended reality that is represented through pseudo-worlds in which users ‘live’ and interact with others. Welcome to the metaverse.

The use of images and 3D renderings to create architectural atmospheres has skyrocketed in the last few years. The huge technological advances on a graphics level and the access to information via collaborative platforms have led to a highly talented industry that often makes us question whether we’re seeing something real or not.

These images are today the main way to represent the most important ideas and concepts of a project on a visual level. They’re an essential resource so that clients, who aren’t normally architects and aren’t expected to understand a floorplan, can understand the keys of the project and get an approximate — not final — idea of the concept behind the type of architecture chosen.

The COVID crisis questioned our way of living and how it is conditioned by the architecture we live in.

After having been locked down for more than five months, many people realised that their home or their surroundings don’t fit in with their new needs. There have been a whole host of responses to this situation, including partial or total renovations, new consumption habits, changes of residence, etc.

In architecture, several fields of reflection and experimentation had already been explored before the pandemic. Examples include the curatorial line of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice proposed by Hashim Sarkis as a (visionary) question (How will we live together?) or the housing proposals of some of the most recent Pritzker Prize winners such as Alejandro Aravena or Lacaton & Vassal.

Specific responses from the profession to these new housing demands include models of collective living such as co-living and co-housing.