L121 : Cities of the Future: Neurotech, AI & Reimagining Urbanism with Firas Safieddine

AEC Tech Journeys with Mayur Mistry

Firas is an architect working across multiple disciplines including neurotechnology, AI, and the metaverse. He shares his background and journey getting into architecture, including his masters studies at IAAC in Barcelona.Firas talks about his early interests in the human body, technology, coding architecture, and responsive environments. He created interactive installations and explored how neurotechnology can inform architecture, such as through brain-building interfaces. He founded the Barcelona chapter of NeuroTechX, a global neurotechnology community. He also started a podcast exploring the intersection of neurotechnology and design. Firas is working on a neurotechnology hackathon happening soon.Professionally, Firas has worked on architectural and urban design projects around the world. He also creates art projects incorporating AI, neurotechnology and virtual environments.Looking ahead, Firas is further exploring metaverse development, aiming to create a more democratized and accessible version compared to current game-engine based metaverses. He is also planning an educational neurotechnology roadtrip to engage young people with DIY neurotech devices.Firas shares key concepts relating to his work - virtual urbanism, rule-based urbanism, understanding scale in the metaverse, city-as-world thinking, address ecologies, tokenizing life, attention economies, and more.He envisions architects designing directly for human perception via brain implants, rather than external mediums. Firas also discusses rethinking architectural practice itself towards decentralized governance models suited for metaverse collaboration. Overall, Firas is exploring new territories in architecture and urban design at the intersection of neuroscience, AI, and digital environments. He aims to engage these technologies for more participatory, experiential and ecologically-aligned outcomes. 00:00 - Introduction 05:00 - Educational background 10:00 - Early work exploring technology and architecture 15:00 - Getting into neurotechnology 20:00 - Community building and events 25:00 - Architectural practice work 30:00 - Art and speculative projects 35:00 - Key concepts and ideas 45:00 - Getting involved in the metaverse 55:00 - Rethinking architectural practice 1:05:00 - Tokenizing cities and infrastructure 1:10:00 - Neurotechnology and the future 1:15:00 - Rapid fire questions 1:20:00 - Closing thoughts neurotechnology, metaverse, virtual urbanism, neuroarchitecture, responsive architecture, interactive installations, artificial intelligence, urban design, Barcelona, masters degree, architect, coding architecture, podcast, hackathon, decentralized governance, virtual environments, brain-computer interfaces, neuroscience, perceptual engineering, participatory design, experiential design, ecological design, attention economy, tokenizing life