Metaverse in Architecture: An Approach to Documenting and Exploring the Egyptian Heritage Through Metaverse

Abstract

Architecture has significantly relied on expansive visualization tools that have developed throughout the years, starting from preliminary drawings and manual rendering to three-dimensional (3D) presentation and digitalized modeling, 3D printing, and laser cutting. With the latest internet revolution, Web 3.0, being introduced and evolved, architects are now acquainted with the metaverse as the revolutionary movement, allowing a cyber teleport from visual presentations to virtual experiences through cyberspace. This research's vision is presented scientifically by giving users the ability to walk through Egypt's historical timeline in the metaverse through virtual portals, discovering the Egyptian heritage in built-in chronological order, starting with the Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Byzantine eras, then passing through the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, till reaching the foreign attacks and the Ottoman era. It proposes the idea of the aforementioned journey to virtually document and explore the abandoned, ruined, and lost Egyptian heritage to enhance the community's real-life economy and work growth. An analytical study is conducted to identify the architectural challenges by analyzing local and international case studies: Tutera and Liberland. Hence, comparing the results of both case studies will expand architecture's competency in the metaverse. Subsequently, this study is using the artificial intelligence (AI) platform Midjourney to visualize and utilize the immersive experience of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems, in addition to merging the holographic elements with the physical architectural elements to achieve the optimum user experience. Finally, this research will explore how architecture plays a major role in designing the metaverse, investigate the plausibility of the tools above, and suggest guidelines for the establishment of the proposed strategy to retrieve the Egyptian heritage virtually, which will benefit both Egypt's socio-economical aspect and interested individuals from all around the world. Hence, implementing the eighth sustainable development goal (SDG), "Decent Work and Economic Growth", resulted in broadening the architecture scope in the metaverse.