A Virtual Community The Size Of The World
MOMA New City
2008
8 billion addresses inside one city the size of the world
New City, a densely urban and virtual space of perpetual transformation and self-generation, changes our perception and experience of the real world.
This 2008 project for the Museum of Modern Art (NY) exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind, designed in partnership with Peter Frankfurt, Imaginary Forces and led by architect Greg Lynn, FORM, applies historical, economical, cultural, intellectual, and social interactions to architecturally-curated virtual city islands.
Imagine a community that is composed of the entire population of the world, and that community
living in virtual city islands built by the most ... progressive architects, writers,
filmmakers, game designers, scientists, physicists, that are working today.
At the 'Design And The Elastic Mind' exhibit, it appears as a series of visualizations in
a 20’x20’ digital cave, mapping a continuous virtual city across actual ones — aligning
Tokyo with NYC or London with Sydney — to project a future of interactive globalization
and constant cultural interchange.
“’New City,’ a projected three-dimensional display of a virtual world by Peter Frankfurt, Greg
Lynn and Alex McDowell, is a model of an idealized society where buildings, cities and entire
geographic regions all flow seamlessly together. It suggests how the Internet could be used as a
testing ground for an emerging utopia."
Nicholai Ouroussoff, New York Times, Feb. 22, 2008