Multispace: Architecture at the Dawn of the Metaverse - Paperback

by Owen Hopkins (Editor)

Back Jacket

Guest-edited by Owen Hopkins

Multispace exists at the intersection of the physical and digital, and in the blurring of their previously clear dividing lines. Multispace is not a single space, but a hybrid space where, in effect, we occupy multiple spaces simultaneously. We enter it on a Zoom call, when we are in our office and in a meeting with 20 people; when we are cycling down a country lane whilst racing against thousands of others who also use the Strava app; when we are watching a TV show while live tweeting; or, perhaps most literally, when wandering around the local park looking for creatures that only appear on a smartphone screen.

A fundamental question of this AD is why the phenomena that multispace describes are of concern to architects. The answer is that multispace points to a situation that is at root an architectural one. Offering both a collective and highly personalised experience, static and dynamically customisable, and above all at the same time public and private, multispace lies at the centre of a set of tensions, concerns and preoccupations at the core of our conception of architecture as theory and practice. It is the messy space between, with rough and uneven edges that are constantly shifting.

Contributors: Aleksandra Belitskaja, Alice Bucknell, Jesse Damiani, Wendy Fok, Andrew Kovacs, Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, Micaela Mantegna, Holly Nielsen, Giacomo Pala, Paula Strunden, Lucia Tahan, and Francesca Torello and Joshua Bard.

Featured architects and artists: iheartblob, Ibiye Campis, Office Kovacs, Space Popular and Liam Young.

Author Biography

Owen Hopkins is an architectural writer and curator. He is Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University. Previously he was Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane's Museum and before that Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. He is curator of numerous exhibitions including most recently Langlands & Bell: Degrees of Truth (2020). A frequent commentator on architecture in the press, on radio and TV, he is author of seven books, including The Museum: From its Origins to the 21st Century (2021), Postmodern Architecture: Less is a Bore (2020), Lost Futures (2017), Mavericks (2016) and From the Shadows (2015), and editor of a further eight books / journal special issues / digital publications. He lectures internationally and is a regular guest critic at architecture schools as well as a judge for several architecture awards.