The Alibi Hotel Manual, Leicester Square, London

T H E A LI BI H OTEL Le ic e ste r Square

Dear Guest, Welcome to the surreal world of the Alibi Hotel. Alibi means ‘elsewhere’ in Latin, and is used in courts of law to describe one’s excuse for being absent. This hotel is unique, because as you checked in, you implicated yourself in its grand spectacle as both performer and observer. Throughout the hotel’s endless corridors, hallways, foyers, atrium, and stairways, your presence is recorded, and can be replayed amongst a multitude of other real and fictional guests. Your digital ghost also wanders throughout the hotel, only you cannot predict when or how it appears. The figures at the hotel are past, present, and future guests, whom you are invited to interact with whether you are aware of its happening or it is only apparent to the outside observer. The concierge, who is distinctly aware of the coming an goings of all guests, is the sole curator of its evolving content.

Windows in this hotel are like frames in a movie, seen as something to be looked into. Some of these windows are real and some are false- all can be receptors of mediated content. As a guest you may find yourself in the shower with a stranger, in bed with someone famous, or at the dinner table with someone from five years ago.

As a dysfunctional house, our sense of normal social relations become distorted. Questioning traditional notions of public and private, transparency, and identity and presence, this hotel blurs the distinction between real and unreal as well as observer and architecture. It is a house that brings to the fore the realities of an time and place where technology allows one to assume multiple simultaneous identities, exist physically in one place while mentally elsewhere, and communicate across great distances at warp speeds.

The hotel is a transforming continuum of social and spatial relations, and you are part of a much greater network, not just a passive spectator. Moving away from perspective and towards duration, this hotel reflects upon the status of our increasingly fluid world. Its narrative is in a continual state of ‘becoming other,’ bringing us closer to a liquid architecture, one that is just as alive as those that operate within it.

Don’t get too comfortable.

Sincerely,

Your Concierge The Alibi Hotel 29-30 Leicester Square London WC2H 7LA

The Truth About Time Enter the surreal world of the Alibi Hotel. We live in a world where technologies of vision increasingly warp our sense of time, space, and place.

When you check in to the Alibi, you become implicated in the performance of its continuously unfolding world.

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Leicester Square and the Commodity of Images As one of London’s foremost historic sites and popular tourist destinations, Leicester Square is synonymous with public spectacle, performance in the form of theatre and cinema, site of glamorous red carpet events, home

of Europe’s first digital projector, and just around the corner from where Isaac Newton formulated our modern understanding of light and color (left).

The context is rich in history of the commodity of images.

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Perception Shots and Urban Montage at Leicester Square Taken intuitively and at impulse, these photographs are a construct of Leicester Square as perceived on the morning of January 30th, 2015. Public spaces such as Leicester Square are like cinema in the way they amplify narrative qualities of ones passage through a sequences of events, part of which are the distractions of movement and passage of others surrounding you, optical qualities in lighting and framing of space, and temporal qualities in the liveliness, rhythms, and sounds of surrounding life.

Life as a Broadcasting House The site’s history as the former Capital Radio Broadcasting House is an important point of departure for the Alibi Hotel. Although the medium has changed, its function remains fundamentally the same. The Alibi amplifies the mundane into public spectacle.

Odeon Cinema Leicester Square

Leicester Square Elevation

The Moon Under Water Pub

Yates Pub

Capital Radio

Irving Street

Radisson Blu Hotel

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Time as Unit of Measurement The unit of measurement for the Alibi Hotel is time. Walking the site at a natural rate of 1.26 meters per second, the distance between frames in a video at the standard 30 frames per second is precisely 15.55 millimeters.

Section as Timeline Considering the section as a conceptual kind of timeline allows for manipulations of both space and time.

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site w square

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A Web of Spatial Relations The form of the Alibi looks as if spaces and window frames are pushing through a membrane-like surface made of cast concrete. Spaces are fossilized within this form, creating a network of interwoven relations. Its surface is movement frozen in time, that can be brought back to life when augmented by digital means, allowing its surface condition and materiality to be transformed and re-invented.

Half Cinema Screen, Half Stage Set The entire exterior of the Alibi becomes like a cinema screen. Its range of stairways, balconies, and bridges become like miniature stages, allowing one to inhabit the projective landscape. As such, it provokes impromptu performances from guests, who can play a non-scripted role within the narrative visual content.

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Like Frames in a Movie

The hotel is seen as an optical device.

Starting from the simple idea of windows shaped to reveal something about what happens behind them, the windows in this hotel frame scenes and images for the outside observer, rather than seen as something to look out from. Windows become like frames

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in a movie, and you play an unscripted part in the non-linear narrative that plays out across the hotel. Some of the windows and doors are real and some are false, but all can be receptors of mediated content. Every window is occupied all the times in one way or another

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live images recorded moments replayed footage narrative loops

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elevation detail w windows

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The Argument Situation

The Murder Situation

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Pierre

Jack and Julie

Visiting the Alibi on buisiness for his leather goods company, Pierre strictly opposes any online presence, and prefers to conduct all his buisiness in person.

Living separately in a long distance relationship, Jack and Julie are seeing each other at the Alibi for the first time in 6 months. They occasionally spend long hours communicating over Skype, and text message constantly throughout the day.

Crossing Over In a world where social interactions increasingly take place by mediation through technology, our presence in the physical world is losing its importance.

As our digital presence subsumes the physical, the notion of crossing over to the purely digital realm is becoming a beleivable reality.

Paul

Melissa

Visiting the Alibi to conduct his research, Paul is interested in all forms of cutting-edge technology.

He is blindly accepting of every new device and gadget, and sees the expanding rate of new technology as a natural extension of human ability.

He is constantly up to date on his notifications and spends long hours online.

Melissa left the Alibi Hotel 8 months ago, and is one of its most infamous guests. She still inhabits room 204 and if asked, she would tell you she prefers it that way. Melissa spends most of her time in a virtual reality.

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Long Exposure Your presence may be captured at any time throughtout the hotel at strategically placed points of recording

Your Digital Shadow Recordings can be replayed in real time at other locations within the hotel, or stored and re-played at different times.

The video content can be manipulated, edited, and curated by will of the concierge.

Inhabiting the Projective Landscape The membrane-like surface of the Alibi is a thick screen condition, where guests can occupy and interact with and within a landsape of ongoing visual content.

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Leicester Square Elevation

The Shower Situation The design for the shower is an inhabitable pocket within the screenmembrane surface. Its window allows for passive interaction with the projected visual content. One must wait for the window to fog up if privacy is desired, which then turns the window into a surface for receiving projected images.

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The Bed Situation The design for the bed is an inhabitable pocket within the screen-membrane surface. Its window is made of switchable glass, which becomes an opaque surface for projection when the lights are switched off.

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The Table Situation The design for the table is made of ulexite, also known as ‘TV rock’ a natural material that works like fiber optics to transfer light through it.

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Towards A Liquid Architecture The role of surface as a communicative interface is changing.

A major part of the Alibi’s speculative potential lies in its conception as a permeable condition that integrates difference and continuity. It is a continually fluctuating threshold where contact and transference between two or more realms is made possible.

The surface takes on properties of a membrane where tension becomes apparent. In this way the architecture can come closer to the status of our technologically mediated world in which our sense of time and space are in constant flux.

The Alibi is a fluid and dynamic site of performance, implicating time and movement in its effects, and utilizing the body to affect the observer in new ways. Its surface mediates a multitude of worlds into one continuously

changing reality. Vision draws us in and invites us to dwell there in dialogue with the architecture and the things around it, forming new kinds of social and spatial relations. Through this recasting, our conception of surface moves towards that of a trans- or liquid architecture.

Manifesting itself in a continual state of “becoming other,� liquid architecture can be a framework to understand our increasingly fluid world. Surfaces become dynamic sites of performance, implicate time and movement in their effects, and utilize the body to affect the observer in new ways.

08:30 Jenny turns on the shower

17:15 argument in the kitchen

20:00 plate falls in the dinning room

18:45 gossip in the living room

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Clay sandbox with kit of parts for making rapid bespoke moulds for plaster casting

Vacuum formed mould prepared for plaster pour.

early plan iteration of three designed domestic situations

milled negative space for vacuum formed mould making

three steps in the recursive casting process

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Early sketches and conceptual drawings developing spatial relationships in the hotel.

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1. Simple 2D shapes are created

Postponement of Intent The process of form finding involved abstraction of simple window shapes through recursive operations of vacuum forming, casting, scanning, and repeating. Through the development of a method for making rapid bespoke casts by vacuforming over a kit of parts in a clay sandbox to form unique moulds for casting in plaster, and repeating in a reiterative manner, the process accommodates intention and accident; it requires the postponement of the full measure of intent in order to allow the unknown to shape an idea.

2. Laser cut shapes are arranged on a pegboard surface

3. Plastic is vacuumformed over the pegmoard armature

4. The plastic form is used as a mould for plaster casting

5. The resulting form is 3D scanned

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Sur - ficial

A term from geology relating to the surface of the earth, this type of surface implies substance, thickness, depth, and truth.

Super - ficial

A term developed in the period of Modernism architecture, this type of surface is seen as detached, separated, and as a mask of false appearances.

Intra - ficial

A provisional term for a different conception of surface in light of new technologies of vision, this type of surface becomes a site of dwelling in and of itself, one that oscillates between superficial and surficaility.

Models of Surfacial Thought Two dominant conceptions of the word surface are seen in architectural history; sur-ficial and super-ficial. In light of recent technologies of vision, I propose that the binary hierarchy between these two conceptions is insufficient, and propose a different conception of the term that oscillates between the two.

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Image and Reality These early sketches describe the occupation of window space by different types of images and how they represent other ways of seeing reality.

Just like a photo filter, architecture can behave as a mediator between our reality, and the image we present for others.

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cinematic model no. 1

cinematic model no. 2

cinematic model no. 3

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Representing Elsewhere Designed as an interactive installation, observers find themselves transported into the model when performing in front of the green screen. Their image appears in real time overlapping and interwoven with other ‘guests’ already inhabiting the hotel, allowing for unexpected encounters and situations.

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Telepor tation The green screen became a means for the tranference between two or more realms, where the method of recording, editing, and curating is their point of contact.

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