Feel right at home in the metaverse

Could you have ever imagined it? The rush to purchase a new home is taking place in the metaverse. According to a report from Metametric Solutions, digital home purchases and sales reached 500 million dollars in value in 2021 and looks as if it will double by the end of the year.

If you are still wondering where (or what) the metaverse is, it is time to catch you up to speed. The metaverse, a virtual space with parallel worlds and digital platforms which you access with a computer and augmented-reality glasses, is attracting more and more visitors, brands and professionals. This includes the gaming world, which is already used to parallel realities and intangible worlds, as well as the art and fashion worlds. In the metaverse there have been fashion events, avatar runways, crypto-boutiques and NFT (non-fungible tokens) capsules.

And what about the world of design? While some companies in the sector are making their first moves, there are those who have already invested in single-brand spaces, like Nemo, the designer lighting brand who opened the first décor museum in the metaverse with digital works and metaphysical icons.

It is a fluid space where you can experience the border between the analog and digital worlds. The word metaverse goes back to 1992, when Neal Stephenson spoke of a three-dimensional space where physical people could move, share and interact via custom avatars in the cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. This recent manifestation of the metaverse does indeed push us towards physical interaction in interconnected 3D spaces with our own avatars. This vaguely sci-fi world is becoming more and more real and concrete in our daily lives. Essentially, all you need is a computer or phone to enter and experience this immersive and exclusive world as much as you want.

Will the metaverse really become our second home? There is certainly unlimited potential and within this ecosystem it is already possible to go shopping, sign up for exclusive clubs (bored apes complete with yachts for VIPs, just as an example), play sports (Nike has opened its ideal city Nikeland where you can have fun and work out with your avatar) and even get legally married (the first to do it was a couple of Indian IT workers at a wedding with 2,000 invitees).

Meanwhile, the artist Krista Kim has already sold the first digital home, and the designer Andrés Resinger has made a collection of NFT furniture and introduced the residential project Winter House together with the architect Alba de la Fuente.
And even Sotheby’s has sold a large virtual villa in Miami and the Ouchhh collective has created a virtual copy of the Arch of Peace in Milan together with the startup Reasoned Art. So, there is nothing left for all of us to do but set up house.

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