Dewan’s NFT of the Tower of Babel offers infinite spiraling exhibition spaces | News | Archinect
Dewan Architects + Engineers have unveiled Babel 4.0, a project which the firm with headquarters in the UAE describes as “the first architecturally-inspired NFT from the Middle East.” A reinterpretation of the mythical Tower of Babel, the project speculates on the role of architects and designers in shaping futuristic metaverse landscapes.
Available now on OpenSea, the project consists of an infinitely-propagating helix form. Visitors to the tower begin at a communal space at ground level, before ascending anticlockwise through exhibition and museum levels which exhibit user-generated NFTs in a virtual museum. The public exhibition spaces are currently reserved for 100 invited members, which may be extended at a later date.
The silos are intended as a platform to promote interaction between digital artistic communities, building on a renewed popular focus on the metaverse. “Babel 4.0 is not a physical building and intentionally opposes style, location, culture, and budget but is a blank canvas for hybrid cultures,” Dewan explained. “Our plan is to launch this NFT collection which will encourage academia, government bodies, architects, engineers, universities, material and product producers, and the community to interact and exchange ideas in a virtual world.”
The tower’s infinite ramp is supported by a network of shortcuts including stairs, slides, and cables. Meanwhile, elevators and teleportation transport enable long-distance journeys. As the tower has no owners, visitors can dictate how long they stay in the tower by transitioning through various time zones and shortcuts.
The tower also contains its own parliament and speaking corner above lush virtual gardens, allowing architects, designers, project managers, and suppliers to share thoughts which will inform the evolution of both the metaverse and the real world. In reference to the 100 gates in the original Tower of Babel, Dewan intends to create 100 NFTs as part of the Babel 4.0 collection, which will be donated to prominent academics and leaders in the fields of design and architecture. The NFTs will be used and exchanged among the recipients for plots in the tower to access various exhibition or presentation spaces.
Babel 4.0 is the latest in a series of recent explorations into the connection between NFT and architecture. Earlier this month, ONE Sotheby and Voxel Architects announced plans to create a digital twin NFT of a home in Florida. In December 2021, it was revealed that NFTs would play a central role in the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale, while in September, Refik Anadol unveiled a “first of its kind” AI artwork NFT collection.
Babel 4.0 is also not the first project to draw a connection between NFTs and mythical urbanism. In April of last year, we covered the unveiling of an NFT collection inspired by Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” showcasing a range of real and imagined cityscapes .
This content was originally published here.