Author: 0xf7748b4f60a8d36dcd6ccb3d30244baecb1429cf
Update Status: On Time
Project Health: 
On Track
Introduction
Hello everyone! We want to express our gratitude for your support of the inaugural Metaverse Architecture Biennale. As dedicated members of the Decentraland and Metaverse community, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to organize this event, celebrating the synergy of architecture and the Metaverse. Together, we’ve achieved a historic milestone, garnering global attention and delivering remarkable design outcomes.
Highlights
However, let’s maintain an objective perspective and critically assess the work accomplished. This event presented complex challenges and encountered unforeseen issues during both the preparation and the show. With the valuable and constructive feedback from the community, we successfully addressed major issues and fully realized our program of events and the 3D architectural experience, despite some initial difficulties.
We can categorize our efforts into four main areas:
Curation and Management: Handling the Biennale, its public program, and participant coordination.
Production Team: Creating 3D models, events, and unique content for the show.
Marketing: Managing publications, PR, websites, social media, activations, and more.
Technical Support: Ensuring smooth technical production and assistance during the preparation and the show.
Curation and management
The primary goal of our Biennale was to connect the architecture and design community with the Metaverse and encourage them to bring their expertise into this space by creating unique architectural and design pieces and fostering a discussion on architecture in the metaverse.
Architects: 16 globally-renowned architects with awards and experience were invited.
Open Call: Received over 90 applications, selected 16 participants with a professional jury.
Decentraland Debut: Most architects were new to Decentraland but produced exceptional designs following our guidelines assistance.
Registered 10+ events for Decentraland community to join and entertain themselves.
Professional festival level public program: 27 speakers participated in the public program with unique presentations, including such people as CEO of Zaha Hadid Architects.
Various music events: three parties with different music genres were produced with invited famous metaverse artists.
Metaverse Architecture Carnival / Mr. Big Mouth & Futuremusic
Organized tours of the event with architects open for everyone.
Collaborated with prominent metaverse Web3 communities, digital fashion brands, and conferences organising unique activations and content for it.
Professional communication with the Decentraland Foundation and Grant Support Squad was organised to prepare for the event clearly and efficiently.
Curation of the event not only for the first four days (21-24 of September), but for the whole period of 17 days until October 7.
Guides and FAQ for the first time users of the platform was produced in text and video format to bring more first time DCL users.
Blockers
Next steps
Production of 3D content and events
An innovative masterplan of the plaza was produced, revolutionising the design for massive DCL events and bringing a totally new experience to visitors.
A number of unique environment and navigation objects were designed, such as map-stands, portals, navigation stelas, 4 micro-worlds installations, interactive objects etc.
Three stages with shows designed for the primary main event-space of the biennale (because of technical issues not working properly during the first days of the show), and another new location of MAB POOL produced to host the shows (including those that were not show correctly on the first days) and the new ones, so that all of them were shown during the event.
9 wearables were produced for the show (some of those were remodelled during the preparation with response to fair criticism from the community).
30+ 3D models of the pavilions were designed under our supervision (including meetings and tutorials), checked and corrected if needed.
5 unique pavilions for partners were designed based on templates, all shown in Decentraland for the first time.
10+ hours of video content produced and edited for the lectures and shows.
Marketing
Big media partners include Designboom (2,2 mln monthly viewers, 6,5 mln followers in social media) and Stir World (170k monthly viewers, 100k followers in social media).
55 website media publications (not including social media) with at least 245 mln monthly viewers.
Active social media coverage in Ig, Fb, X, Li from June to October, with 80+ unique news covered with texts and illustrations.
9 partners including media and communities.
Special promo campainghs with community partners ArtisantChiko RokoDressX
Website design and updates.
All recorded events uploaded to Youtube channel.
10k visitors of the show from September 21 to October 7 on two metaverse platforms.
Production of the official event guide.
Announcement of all of the events in the Decentaraland events calendar.
List of media and publications related to MAB
Additional notes and links
Technical production and support
Technical supervision and optimisation of 30+ pavilions by invited architects.
Optimisation of a complete plaza design and use of colliders.
Regular meetings with the Decentraland foundation technical team.
Implementation of all of the edits suggested by the Decentraland foundation technical team.
Several tests in Decentraland on plaza and local hosts before the show with final tests showing a fully working deployed model.
Integration of an interactive map.
Integration of links to pavilions on W3rlds platform.
Production of mint-machines for wearables.
Optimisation of shows, created for the primary main event-space of the biennale (because of technical issues not working properly during the first days of the show), and optimisation of another new location of MAB POOL produced to host the shows (including those that were not show correctly on the first days) and the new ones, so that all of them were shown during the event.
Technical support of the show from September 21 to October 7.
Further optimisation of the model and correction of technical mistakes revealed during the days of the show in response to users comments (some of the animations turned off, 15% reduction of the model size without loosing the quality, colliders updated, meshes were reduced by 2,5 times, some textures were collapsed).
Some comments regarding technical issues:
The primary concern we encountered was related to the live streams that artists and discussion participants had prepared. Strangely, not everyone could see the video on their screens, although most could hear the audio. We conducted numerous tests, and it became clear that the issue was not with our code but rather a platform-related quirk. When we copied and pasted the same code elsewhere in Decentraland, it worked correctly, as it did on local setups. We reorganized all MAB Public Program events on rented land, recreated the MAB Poll location, and there the livestream worked perfectly for everyone.
To Summarise
In establishing this annual metaverse event, we’ve achieved a level of recognition akin to well-known gatherings such as the Metaverse Festival, Metaverse Fashion Week, and Metaverse Art Week. This recognition is evident in both our visitor count and the substantial media attention we’ve received. While our initial audience may not have met our grandest expectations, we undeniably created one of the platform’s most popular events and attracted more media attention than we had ever dreamed.
Creating such a multifaceted event for the first time presented its challenges. Undoubtedly, there is room for improvement, and your fair and constructive feedback is invaluable. Armed with the knowledge we’ve gained, tackling similar challenges in the future will be more manageable for us and other active community members.