The Business Of Metaverse Architecture, Ft. Sunken Blimp

the-business-of-metaverse-architecture-ft-sunken-blimp
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Back. Is it web 2. 0? Web 3. 0? Well, it's interview 2. 0. We are going deep, flying deep in the Metaverse. Continued conversation. All right. All right. Here we go. All right. I'm getting ready. Get your pens and paper. Get your beers if you're in the UK. If you're in the US, you should still be working. Oh, I let you off.

I'm not going to tell your boss. All right. 15 seconds. All will be revealed. Woo.

Hello everyone in the evening in the UK. Mateus, you legend. Now I'm, I'm, I'm too excited to even begin with my [00:01:00] words, but welcome everyone to And joining us, I've got an awesome guest here and you might have seen him already on this show and thinking, Steve, is this a replay? I wouldn't do that to you. It's this is actually live.

So I'm joined here with the fantastic Mateusz Dunkaty of Sunken Blimp, Flying Deep. Mateusz, how are you doing? Thank you.

Matheus Stancati: very much. Thank you, Stephen. I'm doing great. It's. It's great to be back here. It's not a replay. And I just got to tell you, this countdown always gets me so pumped, like I'm here let's go.

Yeah,

Stephen Drew: let's go. Exactly. I got so excited. I didn't even test my, I didn't even test my soundboard, but so if you, I don't know if you could hear a clap, but I'll do one anyway. So we'll clap. We go. Brilliant. So if anyone's wondering, what the heck is this all about on my evening in the UK? Matthias is going to help at the moment because I had an assignment on this LinkedIn course because I told LinkedIn, the big bosses of LinkedIn, I said, I'm going to find out all about [00:02:00] architects in the metaverse.

And they went, great, do it. And then I was like, oh, okay, I need to do this conversation. So I've started doing a bit of investigating, a bit like Sherlock, and I know we had a chat before about your company. And we're going to talk about that in a bit for anyone who hasn't seen it.

But basically I wanted to talk about architecture careers in the Metaverse. And so with that, when we talk about the words careers, there's a lot to do it. It's like someone dedicated towards it. And we're talking about salaries. We're talking about people who are all in, they've rolled the dice in architecture, in the Metaverse.

And the thing is, Matthias, I hear all the time. People are saying, the Metaverse is really interesting, but isn't that like a game? Isn't that like a project on the side? Or isn't that a bit of fun? And what I'm interested in, though, is can you make a business out of it? Now, I think you have got a proper business, but maybe you could tell the audience what that business is, [00:03:00] who you are, what's the name of the company.

Matheus Stancati: Yeah, absolutely. And just to get straight into the question, yes, you can. And I'm here to tell a little bit about what I've been doing, but basically my name is Mateus Tenkaichi, right? And I started a company about a year and a half ago called Sunken Blimp. And we have been doing work in the Metaverse and working as a Metaverse architecture firm.

And from the sense that we work inside the Metaverse, right? Our team is spread around the world. We have people from Colombia, people that are right now in Qatar, people from Belgium, living in Mexico, people from all over the world joining us and working in this virtual world. But at the same time doing projects that are.

In the virtual realm of things. And it's interesting to compare it to a normal architecture practice in a way, because in the end we are making spaces, right? That works in architecture as well as in the metaverse. We're designing spaces for people to inhabit. And that [00:04:00] goes, through all of these different mediums, but in the end, it goes to the same core, which is how do you put someone's vision, a client's.

Image into an actual environment that they can walk around, explore, live in a way and work. A lot of these spaces, they're not just for living. I think, architecture, we think sometimes goes towards the residential. Yeah, I'm not living. I'm not sleeping in a virtual world. But at the same time, we do spend what 97 percent of our lives inside of a built environment.

Architects, in a way, that's actually the reason why I got into architecture, because that's the play of life, we're making the scenography of what the play of life is, and that's what got me interested. And now in the virtual space, as we spend more and more time in this call right now, we're in a virtual environment, if you think about using the screen to communicate.

But now, if we're in a virtual environment, now we are in this architectural space that defines our virtual communication or virtual interactions. So I think there's so much [00:05:00] interest in this world and it's so exciting to be designing this new phase of what it is to communicate in a way.

Stephen Drew: I love it. I think I I, while you were talking, I was listening and doing everything in the background, so I might have got my soundboard working.

So I got that working. I was listening, I was trying not to get distracted with your beautiful sunken glimpse stage. So what I thought, Maybe a bit of eye candy. I'll put that in the background because it's just as much about seeing as what we're talking, isn't it? So I've got the link here, right?

So I'm going to bring up this link now and bear with me. I'm going to put this link for people on the stream. Oh, I can't cause it's on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn, I will give you a link somehow, right? So on Spatial. There is this sunken blimp stage. Okay. So let me put the link down now. So this is, look how sharp you are here.

And so you have fun. [00:06:00] Look at me. I'm like the skinny version of me. Look at this. Now, when everyone's watching this is spatial and I've covered this before, but have a look at the design that's gone in this. This is not a SketchUp model, which I've plonked down here.

Mateus, do you want to tell us about this funky stage then, and what you've Yes.

Matheus Stancati: Absolutely. Go

Stephen Drew: for it.

Matheus Stancati: So it's a pleasure having Architectural Social here on the Syncofluent stage, and don't mind the Christmas decoration, we're a little ahead of ourselves here, I could have My mom

Stephen Drew: would be proud, so don't worry about it.

Matheus Stancati: But yeah, so this is the stage where we bring in different speakers every week to host presentations. The whole purpose of the Sunken Limbs stage is to find a community of people that believe in the same things that we do. Believe in this future of architecture, the future of design, the future of communication and education.

So we bring in people that believe in that and they come to the stage and present about their projects, their philosophy of living, whatever it is. So far, we've had over 30 people presenting here, almost 6, 000 people overall. [00:07:00] Visiting the stage and the beauty of presenting or using a virtual space for the sake of education and communication is that we're not bound by 2D images and graphics and videos.

We can actually use the space to host this presentation. So right now I'm just going to plug a little bit of the event we're having tomorrow. But this is going to be the last Dive Life of this year. And we call the presentations Dive Lifes, right?

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I was just going to try and get your YouTube up as well, but that people can join in stage and see the replays on YouTube, right?

Matheus Stancati: Yeah, absolutely. So if you see here upstairs where I'm at right now in the audience side.

Stephen Drew: Oh, okay. Wow. To your

Matheus Stancati: right,

Stephen Drew: or

Matheus Stancati: to your left. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: This is actually really easy to use. I'm just terrible at driving it, but go on. Here we go.

Matheus Stancati: So this is the speaker that we're having tomorrow. His name is Justin.

He's from Canada, and he works with sustainable materials for product design. So this is an example of a piece of ecological leather [00:08:00] that he manufactured using shrooms. Mushrooms. Mushrooms.

Stephen Drew: Oh, shrooms. I was getting excited there for a second. I can't say that on LinkedIn. I gotta take it all out,

Matheus Stancati: so he uses mushrooms and other natural material to produce these wrappers for product design. And he's going to be presenting about the whole process. But the thing is, in a virtual environment, instead of just talking about and showcase these 3D scans, and he's going to be talking about his process, the recipes he uses to cook these materials up and that's the beauty, these are 20 to 30 minute presentations, but you can showcase 3D models, walk around, enter, if you're talking about architecture, you can enter a project, scale a model up and down.

Just this past, I think, 2 weeks ago, we had a presentation by this one architect here in the US, and he presented how Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings are biophilic. And he wanted to use Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings to showcase how we can connect to nature. And we showcased models on stage and [00:09:00] then we dropped a portal and people were in Frank Lloyd Wright's homes.

Actually, do you want to go into Fallingwater real quick?

Stephen Drew: Yeah, go on. Tell me the way. You've got to show me the way. It's like the red and the blue pill. Which way do I go? Oh, look, there are all the videos down there. Sorry, I get distracted easily.

Matheus Stancati: Here,

Stephen Drew: there's a Have you sent me a link, have you? Actually, here on stage, if you

Matheus Stancati: look this way Oh my gosh,

Stephen Drew: you've made a bubble!

Matheus Stancati: Yeah. All right, let's go. If you travel, you'll be, you'll see yourself inside Fallingwater and the beauty of this is that we hosted a lecture about Frank Lloyd Wright inside Fallingwater, oh wow, and we've gone to town here.

Stephen Drew: Oh wow. This is pretty cool, isn't it? Any Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright as a tongue twister for my Welsh accent.

If any buffs here of big fans, this is pretty cool, because, it's the kind of thing you study, right? But you can't get [00:10:00] to walk around. There we go. That's the

Matheus Stancati: thing. This is, we learn about this project, from 2D sections and plans. Oh, dude,

Stephen Drew: I've, I'm the terrible driver, haven't I? I've just murdered the stairs.

Matheus Stancati: If you scroll your mouse all the way in, you get a first person view, which is a little better. Top of tips. Yeah, there you go. This is a very simple recreation, but we studied these buildings in architecture school when all of that through two. Photographs, plans, and sections. And then the lecturers, right?

They tell us, oh, this is a good example of spatial interaction and spatial procedure, all of that. But we had, we were supposed to learn that from 2D mediums. Now, what if you host a lecture about Frank Lloyd Wright inside falling water? And this can be, all the students can be in all different parts of the world and experience this, dance, do the moving butter move.

Stephen Drew: Oh my goodness. I have, I just learned how to zoom in on the camera. I'll have to next to [00:11:00] the moves for next time. But hey, this is awesome. So I can see what you're saying, the business case for it. And I tell you what the bit I like, right? Because I know you're really good at rendering in 3D Max as well and okay, you can get like super realistic looking stuff.

The beauty about this is I literally loaded it up in Chrome and people can get it on their iPhone, their Android, and that's why Spatial I quite like out of all the platforms because of the accessibility. What do you think? Is that an important criteria when you're designing these things?

Matheus Stancati: 100 percent and I cannot stress that enough, right?

This idea of the metaverse and all even virtual reality. I'm a big fan, right? I'm a huge fan of virtual reality. I think the technology right now, we're at a 65 percent and in the next 5 to 10 years, we're going to get to the 95%. Something that looks so close to realism is indistinguishable. All of that.

However, we're Look at the amount of people that currently have [00:12:00] VR headsets. It's not a lot of people and it's really hard to even if you ship a VR headset to someone to get connected, all of that. So the idea of having accessibility means that right now I sent you a link in a minute or less, you are in a virtual space.

Now, if you're talking to a client, if you're showcasing a project, if you want a client to have a space to meet with other people, They don't want to go through all of these ways of getting someone because then you lose people. We're not there right now as a society, perhaps. Therefore, having this accessibility allows for this quick way of accessing something the same way we have a Zoom link.

And a lot of people that have been contacting us and doing projects with us, we actually have two clients right now that they are actual designers. They design things, but they're building with us their portfolio. Basically, we're bringing their portfolio into a virtual environment. So they can, whenever they meet with a client, instead of just showing renderings and pictures of what they've done in the past, [00:13:00] they can walk around the same way that I'm doing a tour with you.

We could have been touring the houses that I can make. Look what I can make for you, even though we're talking about real life, architecture in that case.

Stephen Drew: It's impressive. I like that. So there's the two ends of it. It's also, there's the imagination. So basically the Sankind BIM stage we were on before is a failure thing out of the imagination.

It's amazing. And then on the other hand, we've got a bit of architectural history here, right? Really sky's the limit in terms of what you can do and which way you want to go, right?

Matheus Stancati: A hundred percent. And of course that doing a portfolio, we will be we can go back to the Sunken Limbs stage now.

Stephen Drew: We'll hang out there for a little bit, just a quick look. I love it.

Matheus Stancati: A quick teleportation.

Stephen Drew: It is pretty good.

Matheus Stancati: But that's the thing, we, because when you're designing a virtual space, you can even think about how to replicate real life. So in the case of architecture visualization, whenever we're talking about archviz, if I'm trying to show my portfolio as an architect, [00:14:00] I can even do to the minor detail, the replications of the real world, or what I think it's very exciting is to combine the things that we know as affordances in the space and the exciting things about what virtual spaces can do.

Whenever I see a column in a virtual environment, I think, okay why a column, right? However okay, we don't need necessarily a column, perhaps. However, a plant in this case we have planters here. So why plants? There's no oxygen exchange. There's no anything. But sometimes some elements that tie, reality as we know it, at least as right now.

To a project can help us digest a space, give scale, give presence, as well as set a harmony of a space that makes you feel a certain way. And that's something we've been experimenting for a long time. Over a year now in this stage, even though the lectures are open for everyone, we want to make education accessible and we're bringing clients to see what we can do.

We have been using this as research for [00:15:00] us. Every person that comes in, we study their behavior in a virtual environment and we understand where they stand to watch a presentation. How much time do they spend before, moving to a different location? Where do they choose to sit down? And here I have a little history of design of the Sunken Bloom stage because we take in the metrics, that data, of how people behave in an environment.

And then we change a few variables and then see their behavior. And then their behavior, change the path. How do you access the stage? At some point we added this staircase going around the outside, how many people choose that versus the ramp.

Stephen Drew: Did some people fall off that kind of thing and you go okay, this is okay, so this is the less falling off version and then it gets a bit sexier.

So it was always like that iterative design process, right?

Matheus Stancati: A hundred percent. And that's the beauty of virtual spaces, right? Because it can be modified. Now, try making a headquarters for your company in a physical building and then deciding that you want [00:16:00] an atrium instead,

Stephen Drew: it's

Matheus Stancati: really hard to modify physical buildings.

So this allows for a lot of study on what your community is, let's say you put your architecture, social, virtual environment in your website. Now everyone that is part of your community can access that space, communicate, talk to themselves. Now everyone's saying, oh my God, we really need an architecture social, couch or lounge or whatever.

We want a disco club so we can dance. That's something that can be added to the virtual space because community now, they're also part of the environment that they use. They feel like they're part of something.

Stephen Drew: And

Matheus Stancati: that's something that we've been finding that is really precious about making virtual spaces for people because their community finds a place to hang out that is open 24 7.

Stephen Drew: I love it. I have to be careful. This is one of the easiest and at the same time trickiest interviews I've done because I'm getting seduced by like playing around here and I have to remember. That there are, I am doing a live stream and stuff, although this makes it a [00:17:00] lot easier and fun for me, but I think it's amazing.

What I was going to say to you is because this is so useful in terms of giving a bit more ideas in the commercial sense of what kind of things could be possible. It's amazing to see, for example, cause I think I started looking at what you guys were doing around this version, right? And now we're.

Already on Vision 6. 0, what I was going to ask you is, because we talked before this, because I tapped you up about, hey, how's it going, all that stuff, and you showed me a few slides and that's when I was like, oh my gosh, we have to talk again, because if there's someone out there now that's going, Mateus, that's really nice, and it's cool that you've got your YouTube channel, it's cool that you're getting nicer people in for events, and I love that.

The Falling Water. However, have you done anything for clients? You've started doing that, right? You've got also, so this is your gig, and this is like your [00:18:00] experimentation lab, and also all the cool stuff happens here, but you've been starting doing this for commercial clients. Is that right? Yeah,

Matheus Stancati: 100%.

And I can even show some of these projects if you want, I can show here, or you want to show there?

Stephen Drew: Oh, whatever, if you want to give me a little teleport bubble, I'm happy to do that. Here, why don't we do this? If you come here to the center. Yeah. PowerPoint is so 2020, isn't it? We'll just, we'll zoom around.

I can actually share my screen. , My brain's like exploding. All right, cool.

Matheus Stancati: Oh, wow. But yeah, so basically we've been working, as a metaverse architecture office doing some projects and collaborations with different companies. But then these are just some examples, right? This one was a project that we did.

We called the Rock House. And this is an event space that we've been doing for different companies hosting events in the virtual space. In this case, Haskell, one of the biggest construction [00:19:00] companies in South Florida approached us saying, hey, we do have this annual event we do physically, and we always do a live stream, one Zoom, people that cannot make it, they watch the presentation on the cameras, but we want to do something more.

What can we do? We developed this space, and then we put all of their branding. Right now, these are all the day shots. I'll take you later, perhaps into the night. The night time, which has like neon lights and party, but they presented five hours worth of presentation with keynote speakers. And, it was like a pitch type of event.

So different teams in the company pitched ideas and one in the end got a grant to execute the ideas. So there were the 3D models of the presentations and a lounge. A little portfolio of all the different projects they're doing. And in the end, over 500 people joined the event, the virtual event, and this is, 1 of the projects, but moving on, we we got approached by this 1 company in South Florida who sell custom Jeeps, right?

The car Jeeps and they make these 6 wheeler [00:20:00] apocalyptic type of Jeeps. And their problem was that they're very strong in South Florida, but all of their international and out of state clients, they have a hard time seeing all of the options for customization. So what we did is design the showroom with all of the different options and different types of cars that people can go virtually and explore almost like a physical showroom, but in the metaverse.

So cool. This is a very interesting project, which is currently, finalizing development. So it's not. Right now we have only like the space for private customers and it's not open for everyone. But it's very interesting in the future. You're going to see some more stuff from this coming on.

Another one of our clients a couple of doctors, two neurologists, actually neuroscientists, neurologists. Yeah. They approached us to host presentations about medicine in the virtual space. This is the virtual forum, the space that we created for them, and basically it has this lounge and stage space that people can showcase medical models and anatomical models, show the [00:21:00] needle, where the needle goes, basically perform a whole procedure and showcase procedures in a virtual environment. And so far, right now, they're starting to work on one of the first conferences in the metaverse, medical conferences in the metaverse, and this has a huge market. If you look at any medical conference, their booths, their sponsors, there's banners all around, it's a whole.

Economic, there's an economic impact in these and they're doing everything virtually, with doctors from all over the world participating in these, which is pretty exciting. And then so on. I've just skipped through a couple. Oh, we have a team that is fully working, virtually on these projects.

It

Stephen Drew: keeps getting bigger, doesn't it? I have to send you my CV soon, don't know what I would do though.

Matheus Stancati: So yeah, and then these are some other projects, right? This one was a project for artificial islands. For this one investment in the Bahamas for, it's basically a resort made of a bunch of different artificial [00:22:00] islands.

So we made a script for them on how to make these artificial islands, which was a cool project to, to do and visualize, virtually. And then this is the tree house that we built. So this is for a private owner, but basically a tree house in the metaverse. What would that look like?

And in this case, appealing to something that it's actually impossible to build , but nonetheless, exciting thinking about what this geometry would be. It was, I don't know. I'm a sucker for tree houses. This other project is a proposal for the NASA lunar archives.

Basically, a geometric study on how this museum would be, for a museum on the moon. So on. This is a proposal we actually sent to HBO Max. On how, what would be the theater for the premiere of House of Dragons, the show. Wow. Yeah. I love it. And then we call it the Dracarys Theater, taking the idea of fire dragon scales into an architectural style that we could, host a theater in it, premiere movies, which is pretty cool.

It's [00:23:00] honestly pretty exciting as an exploration of what we can do in a virtual environment. This is a couple of studies that we were doing for the proposal for the runways for New York Fashion Week. Basically looking at how can buildings inflate and deflate and behave like fabric, especially for this runway type of event.

Considering that this is not a physical world, what if the building actually takes in different shape as fabric does, depending on The type of event or the type of runway that is happening at the time, in this way, it's almost like dressing the audience with architecture. The same way that Fashion Week is supposed to be, about dressing in general.

So all of these exciting projects are, in the end, almost like an architectural project. We take in what the client needs, what the client wants, and then formulate this design. This is a project that is currently ongoing for SeedSquatch, a community based here in California. And [00:24:00] basically, they have a huge community of people that are working with music and cinema, basically.

And they wanted a space for their community that allowed them to showcase music and live stream live and perform live, as well as premiere some of the movies that they were making. So this is a whole network of different tree houses that the community can meet up, talk, communicate, show their music, show their movies.

Which is super exciting. And again, I love tree houses. So that hit right on the spot for me as a designer, I was like, let's go. And so on, right? This is some preliminary design design exploration for this one project we're doing with the Museum Nacional de Colombia. So the, this Colombian museum approached us.

They want to do an extension, basically a virtual wing to their museum. And the idea is what can we bring from culture and the actual presence in the history of the country into the design. And then these are some study approaches, of course, of the skin or the [00:25:00] actual geometry showing different levels of this quote unquote pointiness or like places that you're supposed to be on, places that you're not supposed to be on.

How do you inform something like that using the idea of Almost like explosion and aggression versus smoothness and welcomeness, right? It's like a play with affordance, right? How do you tell something with design and not words, which is exciting. This is a series of galleries that we actually worked on.

And there are 777 galleries, completely unique. One from the other, but using an algorithm to design them. So in the end, we designed all of the backbones and the rules, and then it generates this unique galleries that someone can show to use their art and all. And this is for a creative AI museum.

Basically, each of these galleries will have different works from different people that use artificial intelligence to create art. Super exciting project. It's very ambitious, and this is only the beginning of it. So [00:26:00] don't worry, you'll be seeing more of this in the future. Wow. And then this is just another example of also an algorithm based design for the Metaverse which takes in different mentions.

So basically the algorithm that we created generates all of these different versions of what a mansion is for private members of this one club that reached out to us. So in the end, each of these are completely unique, but at the same time offer an architectural metaverse space for them to create their own private galleries, their own private collection.

Each of these members, they have their own NFT, so they can display their NFTs and invite their friends, clients, whatever it is.

Stephen Drew: I love him. Amazing. Can't believe you've done this all in the last few months. It's just unbelievable. It's been a lot of work

Matheus Stancati: this

Stephen Drew: year. This

Matheus Stancati: year has been really great for us.

Stephen Drew: It's, again, I'm going to reiterate, it's like the easiest presentation to do because it's just, it's like eye candy. There's lots of stuff [00:27:00] going on. So on that basis, and I'm not asking you to break out the books of the business or number crunch or anything, but top line area, right?

If someone said to you, it's unachievable to make a living in the metaverse, clearly you're charging these clients money, much like a physical architecture project. An architect would charge a client in the real world. Is that true? That, yeah, that is true. So you heard it here first. You can do an architectural business in the Metaverse and that's a real life bed behind you and stuff.

You're not unemployed, you're not bankrupt or anything. You do, you can afford to live, right? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And there you go. It makes me think, isn't it? I'm going to give you a round of applause because all the awesome stuff there. It's just amazing. It's

Matheus Stancati: growing, right? Because in the past two months, we just onboarded more 3D modelers and, Unity developers to help us out because it was getting to the point that [00:28:00] we needed more hands on.

I think, yeah it's good to, to validate, right? That this world has indeed a space for architects and designers.

Stephen Drew: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And what's interesting to me is I can see the, the NFT angle. I can see all this on the, the generative design and that's interesting because I can see people wanting projects of one to 100 and stuff, but actually, when you're talking about the car, the show world, it's not even It's not even like a traditional place where the car's in like a fancy lobby.

We're talking about in the desert, in all this kind of stuff. It makes a lot of sense to me. And I remember years ago, even when we were talking about virtual reality, there's stuff like apartments, isn't it? There's loads of business cases, say now I'm stuck because of COVID, I can't go out, or maybe I'm halfway around the world.

You could knock up apartments and all that stuff virtually. The business cases are exponential, right? It's, there's so many, [00:29:00] surely.

Matheus Stancati: A hundred percent. And each project is its own challenge, right? That's how I like to view it. I don't really think I have preferences in terms of design. But I don't have a style and I don't like the idea of personally having a style because I see each client with each problem and design, questions, it comes a different challenge and a different solution.

So I don't want to be approached by someone that says, hey, I want Sunken Blimp because of their style, because I want it to look exactly like that. Each project starts from scratch. Thinking, of course there could be some references or if someone likes the Sun Kingdom stage, we can go in that route, but, raising the questions from the ground allows for us to like really represent what each client envisions or wants, or helping the client figure out what they envision or want, right?

Yeah. And I think that's the most interesting thing.

Stephen Drew: I love it. And I, so I was walking away in the metaverse, but just to get somewhere else, I wasn't. Bored and uninterested in what you're saying. It's so cool. And a quick [00:30:00] interlude on that is that I, again, how naive I am. When you're like, how should I just get the presentation in here?

I'm like, okay, sure. And then it just comes up on the screen. And that's really cool way of using the medium to convey information. So you got my brain popping off like, oh Metaverse and bring stuff up. Bring videos up and that could be a cool thing. So it feels like it's going in the right direction.

And before we talk about Dive Live, which I want to talk about in a second, just before that, I'd love to know your quick, off the cuff thoughts on where it's all going. Because even in the nine or ten months we've known each other I feel like the space has moved on. And I know right now people are panicking about.

Crypto, and it's picked up again, but basically, there was fraud there, and I can see someone's asked a question about can you steal things in web3? This doesn't [00:31:00] feel like that world. I know it blurs slightly with NFTs and stuff, but the practical applications that you told me, and stuff like this, it's like showcasing the car.

Showcasing, Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings and building a state, building ways of communication. What's your predictions on the way things are going?

Matheus Stancati: Absolutely. So my first comment about where this is going, I think it's going to get Each time, easier and easier for creators to be part of this world, right?

Especially if you think about three years ago, for you to do even a place like this, there was so much development and, actual, coding to get to a level like this, versus now, creators have more openness towards this. I do believe that at the same time that a lot of creators can get involved in this, It still plays to the same point of imagine everyone in the world can get an architectural license today.

It doesn't mean that everyone will be able to design, spaces that make you feel good.

Stephen Drew: So a lot of things, [00:32:00]

Matheus Stancati: it's going to bring a lot more, let's say, perhaps competition or different people participating in the same industry. However, that's when we're going to figure out. Which like spaces make sense and uses the environment in a certain way.

But at the same time, this whole idea of crypto, right? We did have a big turmoil in the past two weeks. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. And honestly, that's something that no one really expected. I. Perhaps don't want to get too deep into crypto right now. No, we don't. I do think it's just a step in the way and the force that meta metaverse or crypto in general has to offer, it's really unstoppable.

And this goes to show that Even though this catastrophe that happened was a big deal for a lot of people, it doesn't stop this movement in a way because we are talking about human connection. We are talking about bettering transfer of information as well, right? And even to mentioned the question that was asked, can you steal things in web three?

You [00:33:00] can always steal ideas somehow, right? Someone could come here, get super inspired and recreate something that is to the T. However, this stage itself, the file, which we think it's something that is easy to copy, right? Anyone can copy and paste the file and replicate. In this case, this file is minted as an NFT.

Meaning that the actual, blockchain, the traffic of this, the transit of this information is traceable. Therefore, it's not as simple as replicating because I can verify that I'm the original creator, owner, and user of this one file. And of course there's a lot of questions.

Perhaps like if we open the crypto box and like the Web3. No,

Stephen Drew: We'll shut the crypto box, but I just wanna say on that point actually about taking stuff. I agree. Like I've been, we were talking a little bit before this about I'm building you are rejuvenating your website because there's, I don't think there's anything.

And you may be like maybe I'm wrong with your website. But the pace of the projects that you've done, you [00:34:00] want to show that fresh slant, right? And actually, web design is incredibly easy to copy. There's very little copyright on there apart from images. So the, by the fact that your stage is in the blockchain and stuff, that's a step further.

But the bit I was going to say is there's always going to be copycats, right? There's always going to be copycats, but there's the original, and there's like I get loads of Architectural Social clones, but that's fine, it's part of the gig, you just gotta, you just gotta keep going, right?

And If a sunken blimp, oh, look at this, we've got a guy, he's gone on the stage. Oh, it was like a photo, like bomber or whatever, wasn't it? I just got thank God it was nothing provocative, otherwise LinkedIn would have a word with me, do you know what I mean? But anyways, you're going to get people that maybe get inspired with a sunken blimp stage and it looks a bit similar, but I don't know about you, but I'm just like, it's part of the push it in the space or whatever, isn't it?

It's going to happen,

Matheus Stancati: 100%. And I think that's the good thing about having a [00:35:00] community and doing things in the public in that sense, right? Because we have a Sunken Blimp community, people that have been coming to the events and been with us since the beginning, and it's always growing, right? And TikTok, I'm always showing the projects on TikTok and showing, what we're doing right now we're actually going to start building one of the projects in public, so actually taking in the community into the design process.

And, just met with the client. This is the ideas. This is what we have in mind, so show. And having a community and exposing that, make sure that if someone comes and copies the Sunken Blimp stage to the tee and changes the logo, chances are that the community would catch that before I do,

And there's people that have been validating that we've been doing this for a long time.

And I think that the idea of community can not go. Hidden in this case, I think for you to have a virtual space, or even the idea of a metaverse, people are the most important things, because you're not designing objects. And I think that's a lot of people get it twisted. Oh, [00:36:00] it's a virtual environment.

And, when you're designing in a 3D software, you're seeing it as an object, but it's until you experience and inhabit and you put people there to see their sentiment that you really are designing for a virtual environment. So you have to think of people make this, what is actually a metaverse.

Stephen Drew: So true. That's part of architecture, isn't it? It's like you watch what people do. And that's what the whole, there's a company in the UK called Space Syntax and they're more on the urban environment, but they are the people that like analyze if you go A to B and there's certain bits in between what are the path that people take, like in real life, the path that was intended to take and then the path that really people go, which cuts across the grass. And I think you're right. It's all about how people use it. And I saw someone else in the background here and all this stuff. And what I was going to say is, because we've got another question here, which I'm not even sure we can answer.

But thanks Arby for putting it in and Arby says can we talk about architects participating in creating digital twins for existing infrastructure and cyber security [00:37:00] ensuring avatars one on one and not impersonating anyone. Now I tell you, I'm with nowhere to begin with that right? That's not, is that something you deal with or is that not in the area that you focused at the moment on?

Matheus Stancati: It's not necessarily my area of focus, but I'm very interested in this, and I actually know some people that have been working more with the idea of digital twins for construction itself and cyber security. However, it's very interesting to think about this, right? Imagine you have this 1 pavilion or this 1 space and within this space, there's a virtual copy of it.

So I can be there in a physical environment and then there's visitors going into the virtual and imagine if we can interact, right? Let's say my living room is connected to this live stream right now. So if I'm in my living room, there's people walking around virtually, interacting with objects virtually.

But what if I can interact with that from a physical standpoint? Perhaps not even talking about cybersecurity, [00:38:00] but, thinking about this future of interactions. If I ride on the dry erase board. I can communicate with people that are in this virtual version of the space. There's a lot of research in this, and we've been working with some projects, and I think that's mostly what I showed in the first time we spoke.

Those windows, the window that looks into this virtual space, so physical objects could interact with digital ones. And right now my focus has been in the virtual spaces. As an architectural, design studio, especially because research and exploration in that field is really important and we have not ditched it, it is in parallel, but at the same time these projects fund the research to push the boundaries of what this metaverse looks like.

Otherwise, if we just stayed in the research and development phase of course that we cannot fund more research and development, right?

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I know. I totally agree. And I think that actually research is important, but to make a commercial business out of something, Howard, trying to do it myself, and in some cases, [00:39:00] I succeed in some ways and others I fail.

It's very hard to make a commercial business. And you're right. You need the money. Coming in to do the research. I always say people go for the architecture social, but hey, those servers cost money. I've got to get the moulons in one way or another. And it's about how you do that in a tasteful, ethical way.

And I think that's what's really important with the projects that you were showing. There's like a commercial purpose that a company can do it, but you're designing it. In the best way, a tasteful way, a thoughtful way. It's not like copy and paste. It's, incredibly full out. That's architecture, right?

Not every architecture practice does all the researchy projects. They also do commercial designs, right? And so there's design entries, but then there's also the companies that maybe the projects that don't go on Dezeen. So I think it's a bit of both and that's why I was excited to see both angles.

However, Mateus, [00:40:00] they're so sexy anyways, your more commercial projects are still pretty damn good to look at,

Matheus Stancati: nice. And I just want to really emphasize that research has not stopped, right? I'm not sure if I mentioned how, or how much I mentioned when we first talked about the idea of the sanctuary.

And the sanctuary being a piece of physical land where we experiment with not only the bridge between physical and digital, but experimentational physical, processes, right? I am interested not only on the digital stuff, but I am interested in the future of architecture as a whole. And of course, the digital plays a part in what the physical of architecture is, because this is not going anywhere.

And more and more we are going to see adaptations. to the physical environment that accept virtual worlds as well. But the idea of the sanctuary is having this piece of land. Which was a dream, where we can experiment with this. And I'm really happy to announce that we, as a Sunken Blimp, we were able to acquire this piece of land.

Oh! [00:41:00] Yes and soon we're going to start, working on the sanctuary and doing the first prototypes of buildings that accept these things. And, actually building physical things as well to communicate to this virtual community.

Stephen Drew: I love it. You get a round of applause there. Oh, they're coming out of my actual speakers at the moment.

And then I had yeah, some, oh, let me get it. I got some electronic dance music. So let's see if I get a good one for that, for the announcement.

I don't know. We got a bit of, that wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted like a, yeah, that's the one I wanted. There you go. Oh, look, you're dancing around. I, it's so exciting. I can't wait. To see what else pops up. So I'm going to put quick links here now, but I thought, we've hit the 45 minute mark, which has gone so fast because all your projects are killer and I could talk forever, but you got a lot going on.

You've got all these projects going everywhere. I thought maybe what would be cool [00:42:00] while we put up the link and all this stuff. Perhaps you've got some questions for me? I don't know. We could flip it around, right? When will you create a virtual space for Architecture Social to have virtual podcasts?

I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that and you're going to laugh. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? All right, because I'm, so I need, I'm going to take a lesson out of your book. Alright, you've got a team around you and I think right now in Architecture Social, it's been me doing everything, which as you know is not long term healthy because I'll just burn out or whatever, what realistic happens if I don't burn out, you do everything a little bit thin, but you're totally right, you're totally right.

You're totally right, but I'll tell you the truth, right? When the Architecture Social and architecture companies out there use me for recruitment, and I will then pay Matty here to build my architecture stage. But until then because I believe in actually, it's you [00:43:00] need a good architect to do it, because I don't have the time to do it.

Like you were talking about working with a developer on your website. I need someone like you to rock up. And for that, you've got to pay the decent price for it. So that's really the goal. I want a proper stage and a proper architectural design then. To do it. Okay. So that's the ultimate goal. But in the short term, what I was looking at, there was actually a new temp a new stage template that's come out in Spatial, which isn't as boring as the original one.

Sorry. I love Spatial. But there, so an architect designed the template and that's what you should do as well. You should design a template and then people can use it. But in the short term, you can't. I'll use a template, I'll explore the medium, and then I will invest in a proper stage. What I was going to say to you while you're here I love the medium.

I like the fact that I think it's interesting having people on camera like me and you here. Then you've got this, and I love the way you can get the stage on, so I you can show a presentation, [00:44:00] so there could be something cool with Inception, I would like to, I would be interested in how can you have an interactive experience where people can be in the audience, they can feel part of the show but then they see us in person, and I think that, and I remember I was talking to you like before, I think whoever conquers that will have an amazing experience.

Interactive live experience. So that was the long answer. The short answer is I will hire you in a year or two if things go well. And if things don't go well, I'll cobble around Revit and get out my GBL files or whatever they're called and I'll make something myself, but it won't look as good as yours,

Matheus Stancati: of course. Of course.

Stephen Drew: I'll be here for sure. Don't put your prices up on me. We're going to lock it in on this part. Everyone that's in the live stream, remember, Sunken Blimp, we're going to do Architecture Social maintenance rates and I'll put a Sunken Blimp bammer, but I'll still pay you. I promise I'll still pay you.

Let's go. We do a little, we'll do a little back and forth. Any other questions that you have for [00:45:00] me here?

Matheus Stancati: Me or your audience?

Stephen Drew: You, but the audience can ask me as well. Oh, and the audience, if you want one question for Mateus before he goes, answer it now, it's last chance saloon, but otherwise you can ask me a question.

Oh, do you know what I was going to say to you? Actually, I'll give you, sorry. I didn't tell you the preempt this. So I know I'm asking you questions out of the blue. Do you know what? Let's talk about architecture careers in the Metaverse. I don't think it's there yet, apart from your company. I don't see people advertising architecture jobs in the metaverse, but I think it will happen in a few years time.

So eight years ago, right when I was in recruitment, no one advertised for a computational designer. They didn't do it. They just said, oh, they just looked for architects with scripting and then became BIM managers and BIM coordinators. And I think we will start seeing. Architecture jobs in the metaverse.

However, do you know what I was going to say to you? Cause you can advertise on the architecture social for free. [00:46:00] So maybe we make the architecture social, the job board for architects in the metaverse, we'll do it. You can use mine for free. Come on. What are you saying? Yeah, I'm down. All right. Awesome. Yay.

There you go. I can do the where, which button was it? I promise I'll put that on my agenda. But we haven't had any other questions come in, so maybe, if it's cool with you, unless you've got a burning other question to ask me which I'll answer, maybe just tell everyone where they can find you.

Matheus Stancati: Oh, absolutely. You've been putting on the Sunken Blooms website, and I just want to make a note. An announcement to everyone, the website is changing very soon. We are working on the development to showcase the different stuff that we've been doing in the past few months, of course. But you can always find me on Instagram at the suncome blimp, or you can find us on It's on YouTube, on our community Discord, which is where we communicate to our community and we announce all of the events that we've been hosting and on [00:47:00] TikTok, we're everywhere.

Honestly, it's really hard to miss. Actually,

Stephen Drew: and shout out to your discord because I think it's probably one of the better ones. It's like pretty good. There's a lot of good ones, but I actually like your discord. It feels really thought out. Everyone check out the SunkenBlim discord, which you can probably find on the website.

And Mateus is just too modest. The website's not that bad. It's just gotta keep up with all the stuff. So then, and hey, if you're watching this on replay, you might see his new website and it'll be really cool. Hey, all so I think that was a really good It's a really good, I don't know, I don't even want to call it, like we went into the portals and it's really good to see the stage.

Yeah, it's gone so quick. So what I'm going to do now is stay on the stage just for a bit while I close down the live stream. But thank you all for tuning in the evening or in midday wherever you are across the world. Do get in touch with Sunken Blimp [00:48:00] and follow all the good stuff that you do. Thank you so much, Mateusz.

I'm going to end the live stream now. All right. All right. Bye everyone. Thank you. See you guys. Take care.