Avatars and metaverses: architecture and city in cyberspace

Abstract

This paper explores how the advent of digital spaces, or “cyberspaces”, impacts the forms of perception, use, and production of architectural and urban spaces in the contemporary period. Based on a literature research that integrates academic sources (Augé, Han, Lévy, Montaner etc.), journalistic sources (Della Torre, Oliveira, Zanatta etc.), and fictional sources (Gibson), the text presents a contextualization of the evolution of digital spaces and the different ways of interacting with them, supporting the argument of “hybridization”: idea that, in the contemporary period, the experience of physical spaces is inseparable from and simultaneous with the experience of “cyberspaces” (websites, social media, digital platforms, the Metaverse etc.), which imposes a brand-new and disruptive notion of space, especially regarding the relationships between bodies and their perceptions of physical and non-physical dimensions. The text also presents considerations about the role of big tech companies in the construction, consolidation, and dissemination of the technical, technological, economic, and social framework that enables the pervasive presence of digital spaces in everyday life and in architectural and urban spaces, consequently imprinting their corporate interests on them. The article contributes to relevant current debates, such as the transformation of perceptions of space and time through digital platforms, the influence of new technologies on the production and use of architectural and urban spaces, and the role of big tech corporations and their economic interests in the dynamics of hybridity between physical and digital spaces.