Zaha Hadid Architects is designing a city in the Metaverse area

Since Facebook changed its name to Meta, the ” metaverse On everyone’s lips. But what exactly is metaverse? Architects Zaha Hadid considered it. From the Evelyn Grace Academy in London to the Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi, the firm founded by the late Iraqi architect is known for its futuristic structures ahead of their times. The proof is his latest project: designing a small, self-managed virtual city.

Designed by architect Patrick Schumacher in collaboration with Micah Bond and Nick Lacroix of the Mytaverse platform, the city will include a town hall, co-working spaces and even an art gallery dedicated to NFTs, all in distinctive architectural style. But this cyber world is not entirely the result of the overflowing imagination of creative people. It is actually an inaccurate reference to a real place: the Free Republic of Liberland, a small island 7 kilometers long.² It is located in the Balkans between Serbia and Croatia. This unrecognized republic was proclaimed by Czech politician Wit Jedlička in 2015 and, as its name suggests, is based on libertarian values. However, due to the lack of legitimate infrastructure, no one lives there, not even its founder. Unable to evolve in the physical world, microscopic nations claim their place in the virtual world. ” It is time, from a technological, economic and social point of view, to transfer an increasing part of our productive life to Metaverse, Schumacher explains. The metaverse is just beginning to reveal its potential for borderless global collaboration. »

Schumacher hopes his virtual Liberland will serve as a model for the development of physical Liberland. Who knows, perhaps in the near future, the latter will be able to apply the brutalist architecture of the former to the real world – an attractive prospect for the estimated 700,000 people who have applied for liberal citizenship. But until that really happens, which its border neighbors suspect, Liberland will only exist in its digital version, where ” population He will be able to communicate and collaborate through his avatar.

If a libertarian utopia like Liberland finds an echo in the metaverse, it is because it is based on blockchain, a decentralized and autonomous technology. After all, it was this same decentralization that got people interested in cryptocurrencies in the first place. In June 2021, for example, the smallest Central American country, El Salvador, passed a law allowing bitcoin as legal tender.