Up: Iceland House, a digital architecture project by London designer Charlotte Taylor and the Évoque Lab in Milan.

Imagine a world where you exist only as a digital avatar. His home is designed with waterfall walls instead of oak. The exterior is surrounded by flames instead of lush green landscaping. As for the location of your property, consider the most remote part of the world, where the laws of physics and geography and permits and budgets do not exist. It’s hard to imagine, right?

Enter the new tech obsession: the metaverse. Term coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel snow shock, refers to a place where virtual, augmented and physical realities collide in a completely digital world. It goes beyond non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies and…