Architecture Thesis - Capturing Space

C A P T U R I N G [ S P A C E ] If space is experienced as motion through a continuum, how can architecture play the role of a camera and capture one’s awareness of singular moments in space and time?

RIGHT: VIEIWING THE IMAGE AHEAD

Thesis Statement Photography is a visual field that composes, frames, and captures a singular moment behind the lens of the camera. The effect of this gesture is one moment frozen in a frame; an image that when viewed, causes the viewer’s ocular senses to become heightened as they digest the visuals captured ahead. If space is experienced as motion through a continuum, how can architecture play the role of a camera and capture one’s awareness of singular moments in space and time? How can the organization of these ‘frames’ propose a new choreography of space and experience?

This project aims to probe these questions by exploring the visual tension between the 2-dimensional image seemingly projected by a direct confrontation, and the rotational experience around its 3-dimensional visual body in space.

The architecture proposed is a series of perspectives that are captured by the user’s ocular senses, generated from the 2

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process of framing an image at every onesecond interval. Three main exploratory spaces are formed from the three different ways of capturing the image, giving rise to different levels of consciousness of time and space, different framed images, and different perceptions of elapsed time.

Located at City Square, Melbourne CBD for its proximity to the Australian Center of the Moving Image, this architecture proposes a public transitional spine that celebrates the Still Image. The architecture also contains a photography gallery and studio that caters to small residency programs.

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LEFT: VISUAL TENSION - THE IMAGE AND THE SPACE

The ‘Image’ as Common Ground

image (noun)

is ‘a representation of the external form of a thing in art’. It is further defined as an optical appearance or counterpart produced by light from an object reflected in a mirror or refracted through a lens.

(Oxford Dictionaries, 2013) The image in the act of photography refers to the external form of an object captured through the lens of the camera. When seen by the viewer’s eye , this singular photograph or image then projects its own mental image in the mind of the viewer. The photographic image as percieved by the viewer undergoes a two-layered process; its refraction through the lens of the camera, and its refraction through the lens of the human eye.

Considering that both the viewer of photography and architecture are human, how can architecture play the role of a camera and allow the capturing of an image? In a continuum now defined by motion and time, how can space be an image captured as singular moments?

This project is set-up around these questions, using the tension between the image’s 2-dimensional visual projection and space’s 3-dimensional visual experience as a guide to forming the architecture. Three visual experiments were set up; the first is a rotation around an image, the second is a slight shift to the left and right of an image, and the third is a direct confrontation of the image.

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VISUAL TENSION SCALE

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LEFT: EADWARD MUYBRIDGE “ANIMAL LOCOMOTION. PLATE 2.”

1887

Frames per Second The minute movement of body in space was first captured by Eadward Muybridge (18301904), a pioneer in motion photography photographs. His seminal work ‘Animal Locomotion’ in particular was an intriguing set of images during his time, recording the locomotion of human beings in intervals smaller than the common time denominator of seconds. Each image in his set of photographs, records only a slight movement (eg. the lift of the leg, the torsion of the body) from the image before.

The optimal human speed for percieving visuals ahead as recorded by Jan Gehl (2010) is 1.4m/s. Subsequently, the human being is known to see in a horizontal plane, looking slightly downwards in a 10° bow whilst walking. These basic human features have been used as a guide when designing, creating a relatively horizontal transitional spine that has been ‘sliced’ at 1.4 meter intervals.

The relevance of Muybridge’s micromotion photographs is similar to that of the frames produced in this architecture. The intention of this architecture is to frame an image at every second, heightening the user’s ocular consciousness of space and time in these singular intervals.

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BODY, SPACE, AND TIME

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THE AMBIGUOUS IMAGE

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LEFT: AIM ARCHITECTURE GLASS OFFICE 2013

What is the Frame and What is the Image?

The frame is the camera’s tool when capturing an image. In the 3-dimensional space where the image is not a stationary object viewed on a wall, what frames the image, and what is the image?

The three images designed in this architecture are central points that respond to the human’s visual axis. However, the periphery of one’s own visual field also frames the view projected into the eye as an image. In an architecture where constant framing is its dominant language, the next framed space also becomes the image.

The frame is merely a tool that narrows the cone of vision and object ahead into a forced perception of the object. When there are more than two objects forced into becoming the image, the focus of the viewer becomes ambiguous. What the image is becomes completely unique to every individual who experiences the architecture.

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LEFT: DILLER + SCOFIDIO SLOW HOUSE 1994

The Slow House Exploring similar themes, Diller + Scofidio’s Slow House explores the journey from automobile to door to window, emphasising on three ocular instruments: the ‘car windshield’, the ‘television screen’, and the ‘picture window’.

The visual tensions played out in the Slow House have become a precedent for this architecture, allowing the visual capacity and visual axis of the user to drive the contradictions in its instrument.

D+S also question the relationship between the constructed frame and the real frame in this house, letting the contradiction between the car windshield, the television screen, and the picture window play out against itself in space. Although designed intentionally to question the social infinite between city and vacation, the Slow House undoubtedly also poses questions of what is the frame and what is the image.

“The house deforms the model of classical perspective... with no direct visual axes, only onstantly changing optical tangents splintering from the curve... The house is a mechanism of arousal, eliciting an optical desire and feeding it, slowly.” (Diller & Scofidio, 1994).

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LEFT: OVERLAY OF THE IMAGE EXPERIENCE IN TIME AS ONE MOVES AROUND IT.

Space and Time This project hypothesises that the intensity of a space’s visual tension is inversely proportionate to the perception of time elapsed when walking through that space.

The stronger the tension between the image ahead and the body’s 3-dimensional visual rotation around it, the slower is the viewer’s perception of time.

As the body moves around an image, the ocular senses of the eye restrains to maintain a visual axis with the image.

The tension causes the viewer to focus on the restraint, being more aware of the time elapsed to overcome the restraint.

When there is a direct correlation between the body’s movement and the visual axis maintained by the image ahead however, it is easy for one to move towards the image. The time elapsed is percieved as faster as one’s body movement and optical desire work with each other, escaping into the white-noise of space and time. .

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ARCHITECTURE AFTER ART

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S P E C U L AT I O N _ ANDREAS GURSKY

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Critical Analysis: “The aim is to obliterate the contingencies of perspective, so that the subject appears to be present itself without the agency or interference of an observer; and to select and shape the view so that it suggests not a part of an aspect but a perfectly self-contained whole...”

(Galassi, 2002).

Having seen and analysed three very different photographs by Gursky (the personal romantic capture of The Rhine II, the hyperdense retail scene of 99 Cent, and the public leisure of Ratingen Swimming Pool), the common theme that emerges from his works are his omittance and/or overlay of subjects in his photographs to present a concept in a self-contained whole. Gursky’s ‘reduction’ or ‘minimalism’ to a single frame is what calls immediate attention and connection to it. In The Rhine II, a minimalist landscape is what remains after omitance to reveal the elements of nature that had touched Gursky. Whereas in 99 Cent and Ratingen Swimming Pool, more elements were added 136 CAPTURING [ S P A C E ]

to emphasise on the density of commercial products in retails stores (99 Cent) or the leisurely activities when going to the swimming pool (Ratingen Swimming Pool).

The impact of these atmospheres is also delivered through the play of micro and macro composition of Gursky’s works. The scale of his prints, often 2 to 3 meters long, dwarf his viewers and overwhelms them with its power, whilst maintaining the fine details in high resolution for closer inspection.

Gursky seems to understand very well the ocular capacity of his viewers, as he designs both micro and macro compositions of his photographs to create a two-fold experience.

One needs to take in the whole picture as a form of artwork before stepping closer to comprehend the details of the artwork.

Techniques that also enhance the impact of his photographs are Gursky’s formal composition and planarity that governs the web of micro details occuring in the

OVER: ANDREAS GURSKY

“THE RHINE II” 1999

work. The high saturation and contrast in the colours of his photographs also portray a hyperreal scene where viewers are able to pick up the subjects immediately.

In relationship to architecture, questions of enhancing its atmospheric quality arises.

What if like Gursky’s photographs, a particular atmosphere of concern is experienced by people almost instantaneously and in all its power when they use a space?

Reflecting back on the Gursky’s speculation, the architecture produced does not directly refer to his hyperreal photographs or techniques of omittance and overlay.

Rather, it is the simple question of how one views the photograph as a general mediumthat has become the driving point of this architecture’s design.

Since the ‘users’ for both art and architecture are effectively human beings, Gursky’s technique of omitting or overlaying particular subjects as well as an overwhelming scale may also work as a technique in engaging with and affecting user’s behaviour in space. The understanding of human’s ocular capacity should be equally important when we design spaces as we can take Gursky’s two-fold observation a step further and design how people respond to space 3-dimensionally.

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Bibliography

Images

Galassi, P, 2002, Andreas Gursky, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Film.com, Man with a Moving Camera, 2013, <http://www.film.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/07/man-with-a-moviecamera1.jpg>

Gehl, J, 2010, Cities for People, Island Press, London.

Diller, E & Scofidio, R, 1994, Flesh: Architectural Probes, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

Oxford Dictionaries, Definition of Image in English, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ definition/english/image, 2013.

Charlotteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blog, Andreas Gursky, 2013, <http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-06nSnQ1ZMm8/ USptjobzO4I/AAAAAAAAB_w/qFWXFFWYjgw/ s1600/ZCS_08_Andreas_Gursky_ Architecture_004.jpg> Artobserved, Andreas Gursky, 2010, <http:// artobserved.com/artimages/2010/04/ GURSK-2010-Andreas-Gursky-installationshot-Main-Gallery-South-D-JW.jpg> Muybridge, Animal Locomotion. Plate 2, 1887, <http://www.muybridge.org/AnimalLocamotion-finished-1/Animal-LocamotionVol-1/9518441_NLbBLt#!i=639790988&k=Sx nTBr2&lb=1&s=X2> Tate, Andreas Gursky, The Rhine II, 1999, < http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gurskythe-rhine-ii-p78372> Unit 03-Metamorphosis, Untitled, 2012, < http://1.bp.blogspot.com/uNbmd0tN3ek/UNiW9M8GfSI/ AAAAAAAAAzo/KywSBLPVTvs/s1600/tumblr_ m3qa5bHv9a1qcbkj5o2_500.jpg>

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