In virtual space, a computer-generated environment, the limitations of the real world no longer exist. Here, visionary designs and fictional scenarios for architecture can be imagined without constraints. A new exhibition at Vienna's Museum für angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Arts) — also known as MAK — is showcasing a wide array of interior design, architecture, and urban planning projects in virtual space. Titled /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, the exhibition presents a “freeze-frame” of work created in virtual space over the past decade (2013–2023), and includes contributions in: architecture, landscape design, interior and product design, urban planning, visual arts, game design, and film.
The exhibition takes its name from a prompt entered into Midjourney, an open-source AI generator. After typing "/imagine:" followed by a description of what the user wishes to visualize, the platform then generates images with limitless variations and modifications. “Hyperrealistic renderings and AI algorithms are becoming ever more popular and have revolutionized approaches to concept development in architecture and design,” says the MAK. “These technologies are now available to practitioners from a range of cultures and backgrounds, who are using them to imagine new worlds and utopias that exist between speculation and reality.”
/imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual is divided into four chapters: Speculative Narratives and Worldbuilding, Research Investigations, Dreamscapes, and AI and Algorithmic Variation. The exhibition features a broad range of works in a variety of media, including: renderings, CGI visualizations, 3D animations and prints, digital films, and virtual reality (VR). The New Virtual addresses the challenges and potentials presented by virtual worlds, as well as “the associated social, ecological, political, and infrastructural effects,” says the MAK. The exhibition space was created by Vienna- and Berlin-based Some Place Studio — the design was inspired by visual tropes taken from 3D digital worlds and rendering processes.
Speculative Narratives and Worldbuilding
The exhibition chapter “Speculative Narratives and Worldbuilding” gathers projects that are “grand in scope, speculating on future scenarios through terraforming, city building, or rewilding,” says the MAK. They are not intended as blueprints for the future, but play with the imagination by visualizing new scenarios for coexistence on a worldwide scale. “The assembled architects and artists have developed scenarios that are neither utopian nor dystopian, but rather offer inspiration and ideas for future communities,” says the museum. In the 2020 short film Planet City by architect and director Liam Young, earth’s entire population of 10 billion people live together in one megacity in the year 2050 — the remainder of the planet’s surface is a global wilderness used for regeneration. _Spaces by architectural design studio iheartblob, transports visitors to a virtual cityscape and is based on blockchain technology.
In Common'hood, a community simulation game by Jose Sanchez — an architect, game designer, and director of research studio Plethora Project — players are confronted with “the challenges of precarity, inequality, and models of economic production in today's cities,” says the MAK. In a post Covid-19 world, the game is inspired by the social dynamics of everyday living, such as mutual aid and solidarity.
Research Investigations
In the exhibition’s “Research Investigations” section, works “provide counternarratives to western colonialism’s ongoing influence on technology and raise our awareness of the need to decolonize digital data,” says the MAK. This is premised on the notion that large Western corporations are collecting the world’s data and asks: who owns virtual spaces, who are they for, and how are they regulated? In the multiplayer game Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus (2019), designer Miriam Hillawi Abraham uses VR to tell a version of the story of the Ethiopian city of Lalibela, with its historic stone churches. Navigating the site, players “adopt new perspectives on African cultural heritage." The Iranian-Kurdish artist Morehshin Allahyari reproduces 3D-printed replicas of a set of twelve artifacts destroyed by ISIS. In a project titled Material Speculation: ISIS (2015/16), each piece includes a flash drive with data pertaining to the context of the destroyed original.
Dreamscapes
“Dreamscapes” are imagined utopian landscapes, buildings, and interiors. They incorporate surrealist elements and are inspired by modern and postmodern architecture. “A new generation of creators has embraced the potential of rendering-software, formulating a distinct aesthetic of computer-generated fictional architecture that blurs the boundaries of reality and fantasy,” says the MAK. Expressing hyperreal qualities, “Dreamscapes” offer a form of escapism from the often harsh realities of modern-day living. Designer Alexis Christodoulou presents the enchanting train journey Quantum Express (2022) and in Neo-Chemosphere (2021), Charlotte Taylor and Anthony Authié (of ZYVA Studio) show a fictional home that pays homage to John Lautner's Chemosphere House (Los Angeles, 1960).
Salzburg-based architecture practice Studio Precht create “dreamy visualizations” of structures made using timber construction. “Some of these designs are now actually being realized and built,” says the MAK. One example is Bert (2018) — this modular and flexible treehouse was developed in cooperation with Baumbau, a manufacturer of small homes.
AI and Algorithmic Variation
In the “AI and Algorithmic Variation” section, a range of architectural projects developed using AI-based software showcase “a diverse, critical, and playful approach to complex issues around AI, co-authorship, and resources,” says the MAK. Emphasizing the growing use of AI algorithms, the museum believes their application across architecture raises “profound philosophical and design questions.” In My Mid Journey Trash Pile (2022), architect and game designer Leah Wulfman uses Midjourney to generate images from buildings made of various types of trash. Five of these images were then brought to life as oil paintings.
/imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual is on show at the MAK until 10 September 2023.
