You Can Now Purchase the House of Your Dreams (as an NFT)
In the past couple of months, the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has exploded. From Beeple selling a jpeg at Christie's for $69 million to Grimes selling her own artwork as an NFT for the comparatively humble $6 million, the market for crypto-proofed works shows no signs of slowing down. Now, the artist Krista Kim is adding entire houses to the list of things that can be purchased as an NFT. The home that she designed, known as The Mars House, officially goes on sale today on SuperRare.
The house itself is meant to help put the inhabitant (or viewer) in a zen-like state, a result of Kim’s study of meditative design practices that started in the depths of quarantine. In a rendered video tour posted on Kim’s website, the viewer is walked through a thin glass pavilion that’s somewhat reminiscent of Philip Johnson’s glass house, only if it had been made in The Sims.
To add to the zen-quality, Kim worked with former Smashing Pumpkins Jeff Schroeder who provides a soundtrack for the home. The furniture, from the couches to the dining table, are iridescent and ethereal, which makes sense, considering that the person who buys the NFT will have the option of having the house, and furniture, made in real life by a glass blowing company based in Italy, with the assistance of Micro-LED technology.
Other artists and designers have recently played with the capabilities of NFTs in their work, from Andreas Reisinger to Alexis Christodoulo. And putting aside the gimmick-gold-rush quality that is associated with the NFT world today, the future of purchasing, and viewing works of art, design, and architecture will certainly include the use of virtual technologies, from AR to VR, and NFTs.