CONCEPT
The future web is one of countless worlds and multi-layered realities. As the XR movement takes shape and 2D evolves into 3D, the discipline of architecture will be forced to go far beyond physical form. SPOLIA is a body of work created to explore this moment of metamorphosis for buildings and cities as they navigate both real and unreal futures.
This project draws deep inspiration from the archeological term of the same name - spolia - which refers to the construction practice of reusing design elements between old and new structures. This practice has taken place throughout history, but perhaps most notably across the Roman Empire between the Classical Era and the Middle Ages. During this period, stone elements that were used for ancient structures were repurposed and collaged directly into medieval buildings. As cities have come and gone, spolia has long served the role of a great connecter, preserver and storyteller.
Journeying into new, unreal dimensions - SPOLIA is a bridge. Presently, we’re circling an event horizon where extended reality (XR; VR, AR, MR) and AI will rapidly rebuild our flat 2D web experience into immersive, all-consuming virtual worlds.
MODULAR MEDIUM
Each work in the SPOLIA series includes a modularly designed 3D super-structure or series of sub-structures. These objects are designed, scaled and optimized to interact with one another - but also to engage the building blocks of my past work; ARQs, ROOMs, FFORMs and MUTATIONS.
Multiple formats for these 3D models will be included in the metadata of each SPOLIA token, stored permissionlessly (licensed under CC0) to encourage the public to remix these architectures into a virtual - or physical - world of their choosing. Published with Manifold and stored on Arweave, the media of each SPOLIA ERC-721 contain 3D metadata assigned as model_glb, model_usdz, and spolia_glb - an editable file where each mesh is individually customizable.
