proj2_status

Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge

" . . . projection is literally the hyphen between idea and experience that is the place of culture . . ."

The essence of design, then, lies in representation - the translator of conceptual ideas into built form. This is, I think, the essence of Alberto Perez-Gomez and Louise Pelletier's "Architecture and the Perspective Hinge. According to them, the development of different types of representation has always coincided with a significant shift in the conceptualization of the built environment. The development of perspective drawings, for instance, occured simultaneously with a more humanistic world view. All of a sudden, the "viewpoint" of mankind mattered. Thus, artists and architects began developing ways to more accurately, descriptively, and expressively depict this perspective. Contrast this with the Gothic master builder who, without the use of scale or orthographic drawings, constructed magnificent spiritual edifices. This architecture was not seen as being a creation of the builder itself, however. Rather, the master builder was merely a vessel through which a supreme being instilled its order upon the earth.

Gomez and Pelletier began by critiquing contemporary architectural practice and its use of representation as "prosaic transcription" rather than "poetic translation:"

"Functionalist motivations of our technological world have promoted the pragmatic capacity of architectural drawing over its potential to construe a symbolic order. For architects, it is important to remember that a symbol is neither a contrivance nor an invention - nor is it necessarily a representation of absolute truths or transcendental theological values."

This line of inquiry proposes an important question: What comes first, the means of representation or the conceptual shift? On what side of the "perspective hinge" does architecture sit? Gomez and Pelletier would seemingly say that it lags behind, that it is struggling to keep pace with technological and cultural inovations - that contemporary architecture, the goal of which is to symbolize and respond to both time and place, is not rooted in either.

proj2_sequence analysis

_the movie
American Beauty, 1999
Director: Sam Mendes
Screenwriter: Alan Ball



_compositional analysis
A two-dimensional analysis ignores perspectival views and studies treats the compositional structure of the screen. In this scene, the screen is divided into six retangles. The center two are split again in several cuts. In each cut, the director has called attention to one either these specific rectangles or a particular intersection.



The animation uses the grid of American Beauty to create an alternate composition. Significant spatial zones from the original scene are weighted according to their visual signficance on the screen. Three lights, one of which corresponds to specific camera views reveal the spaces as they emerge from the composition.



_spatial analysis
This scene also plays a clever game with the lines between the four actors - girl, boy, camera and television. The camera and television reveal the direct and frontal relationship of the two actors, yet the space projected by their respective "lenses" is always perpendicular (with one important exception). When the camera is passed from one person to the other, the camera is pivoted, letting the television pass through its frame (which is revealed by the television itself). The viewer's frame, or the film camera, also engages the lines created by the actors in varying ways. So, in short, the scene utilizes frames within the larger frame to reveal the spatial relationships between the actors in the scene.



This sequence analyzes each camera "cut," only showing those relationships which that particular view reveals.

versioning_vector-based design

In their introduction to Versioning, SHoP Architects make a distinction between “vector-based information and pixel-based simulation and representation.” These two divergent systems present, through their contrasts, the essence of versioning.

Vector based graphics use precise mathematically based forms, which are continually adaptive and flexible. Change the equation, and the resulting image responds accordingly. A vector-based graphic is completely precise, its accuracy limited only by the medium on which it is projected. Raster or pixel-based graphics, on the other hand, are estimations, and limited by their initial inputs. The accuracy of a raster image depends entirely on the number of pixels that create it. If given enough of these digital dots, they merge together, creating a continuous, seamless whole. This relies on a simulation - a tricking of the mind - and is dependant on the initial input. Future iterations will be directly descended from that original image/idea/form. Ingebord Rocker equates this with architecture that is merely the representation of an a priori idea or image. It is also his critique of DynaForm, which began with a “master form” as opposed to a set of “master rules” from which the form is derived.

Versioning, or vector-based design, fosters a non-linear approach that attempts to control the process by which the form is created - “a formal means of production to address variable conditions” – rather than the form itself. Versioning, then, is a shift not in design style, but in design process.

Vector-based design that can easily be translated from digital projection to physical fabrication reveals versioning’s greatest asset – reviving architecture’s commitment to built things. Purely digital design is limited by its “immateriality.” Through versioning and digital fabrication, we now have the potential to “recombine” the processes of virtual and physical modeling.

proj1_review

As this project progressed and I struggled through the challenges of my inaugural foray into animation, two issues came to dominate my thinking. First was the way in which I was conceptualizing the intial study of the body in motion. The intial impulse for me was to take a very scientific approach. I was concerned with the accuracy of the inputs and the descriptive value of the derived model.

At some point, however, it became clear to me that our analyses of the body in motion were incredibly superficial and arbitrary. The reality of the situation reveals that no matter how many views we took, or how accurately we plotted points in 3-dimensional space, we could never perfectly describe the space through which these bodies moved. This realization was important to me in directing my investigation away from discrete, tangible objects to one in which I began harness the representational and design potential of animation.

This leads to the second issue - namely, what role did animation play in my design process? Was it merely the assigned media? Was I only using animation to describe what I had already done? Did it lead me down new paths, instill in me new ideas?

Of course, as my first shot with this new media, my narrow range of knowledge and experience limited my exploitation of animation's potential. However, I did begin to utilize its ability to describe not only the beginning and the end, but the in-between, as well. This change in thought is incredibly enlightening, as I can now, using animation, study, represent, and design processes, not merely discrete objects or views. Similarly, I now have a more accurate method by which to represent and design space, which exists in the "in-between".

[An obvious criticism of my latest animation, then, is that my models described actual, discrete moments, as opposed to depicting the fluid process of echoes.]

virtual projection_final

virtual projection_final_progress