The Hybrid Lab: Creating shared designs in the Metaverse

ongoing

The Hybrid Lab is a platform for digital collaboration. We want to use current applications of the so-called ‚Metaverse‘ such as the games engine Unreal and 3D-scanning techniques to create a hybrid real-time design platform that will let others participate in our project. We are a mixed team of designers and researchers with interdisciplinary backgrounds (Industrial Design, Architecture, Games Design, Economics) from Kiel, Eindhoven, Warsaw, and Rotterdam. In a series of remote and hybrid workshops that take place in an immersive digital shared environment, we will establish a novel model of collaboration. During those workshops, we will make public street furniture using the latest large-scale 3D-printing technologies. Instead of the project partners traveling to the locations separately, the physical public space is transported and experienced in the digital space of the Metaverse through 3D scanning. Engaging users in the design will be simplified by using the digital platform. The shared space we are creating will be both our archive as well as the place of in situ creation of our designs. Network institutions and experts will give their input during our workshops to increase the relevance of our discussions. By publishing a manual about the process and its outcomes, we will make our knowledge accessible to others. Our project will also be physically on display in a shared hybrid exhibition at Dutch Design Week Eindhoven and at sp_ce Kiel. The project could be a model for future design processes. We see the Metaverse not as a commercial, monopolized space for a 3dimenional version of social media. Our space should rather be an example of an open, transparent vision of the Metaverse – different from the dystopian scenarios of some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.