Architectural Translations: Portfolio

ARCHITECTURAL TRANSLATIONS

DECODING - RECODING - TRANSCODING AR0114

Yasemin Parlar 5284007 Y.Parlar@student.tudelft.nl

Tutors: Alper Semih Alkan Xander van Dijk Joran Kuijper

TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

April 13, 2021

Contents

DECODING , RECODING, TRANSLATING

OBJECT DECODING , RECODING, TRANSLATING

ARCHITECTURE AS INDEX

TIME AS INDEX

PROGRAM AS INDEX TRANSCODING ARCHITECTURE

PROGRAM AS INDEX

MATERIALITY AS INDEX

MATERIALITY

GAP

1.1 Content

This is not true of architecture, which is brought into existence through drawing. The subject matter (the building or space) will exist after the drawing, not before it.”

Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building” 1986, p. 167

The gap is a non-object that only exists between two other objects beside it through its non-materiality

The void of the gap allows for the objects beside it to read as volumes with mass. The gap functions by catching shadows and lights and works to emphasize its material neighbours. Therefore, while the content of the objects beside it are their materials, the content of the gap becomes shadow.

In this decoding of the shadow as content of the gap, there is a reversal of material properties. Here, the gap becomes a material object that is able to cast shadows. The decoding in the photographic image appears in a particular angle and light, and therefore, represents a non-real condition. According to Robin Evans, unlike other forms of art, architecture comes to life following the creation of its representation. In a similar manner, the codification of the gap here comes out only when photograph is taken.

How does this decoding change the way the adjacent objects are perceived?

1.2 Medium

“There is rarely representation of a “reality;’ or even of an idea or a belief. What representation represents is another representation in a chain of signifiers that circulate from one medium to another all the while believing, or letting us believe, that there is a direct referent.”

Diana Agrest, “Representation as Articulation Between Theory and Practice” 2003, p. 167

What makes the gap into an object? Depth, void, shadow, and other materials that define it as a boundary

These qualities can exists in reality, but they can also live in the realm of representation. The reversed role of shadow was explored in the previous decoding where the gap as an object came through in the photographic image. What if the same principle can be translated into a different medium.

This decoding focuses on the bounding elements of the gap, the objects that surround it. The doubling of the objects in this case is achieved through the use of a mirror, where the reflection is the medium. A physical gap does not exist, but the gap as an object exists in the medium - inside the reflection. From Diana Agrest’s quote above, we can deduce that the doubling is a signifier that alludes to material qualities even when they are not physically there. The gap does not exist in reality, but only in the material image.

Using reflection as a medium to convey relationships that don’t exist.

1.3 Technique

“The printed media are the mirror wherein the bits and pieces of one’s writings and work (often unrealiz’ed) return miraculously to their author in a “complete” image.”

Beatriz Colomina, “Introduction: On Architecture, Production and Reproduction” 1988, p. 16

How can the recoded gap be used to track time? The third excersize in decoding the gap as an object started with a series of photographs taken throughout the day to track changing light conditions. Through the gap in the cardboard panels, a changing image of the building beyond that represents the cycle of the day can be seen. The decoded photograhs are then stiched together to create a unified product. With this technique of stitching, additional “gaps” emerge, and thus the gap is recoded. The cardboards placed next to one another act as visual gaps between the images of the building. These visual gaps then suggest a third “gap”: a gap in time. Considering Beatriz Colomina’s idea of printed media acting as a mirror, here the stiched photographs act as a mirror that unifies the fragmented parts of the image into one symbolic representation.

Revealing hidden gaps through the stitching of episodic photographs.

[Figure 2.0.1] House VI, exterior view, 1972-75, courtesy of Eisenman Architects

House VI

“House VI is both an object and a kind of cinematic manifestation of the transformational process. Thus the object not only is the end result of its own generative history but also retains this history, serving as a complete record of it, process and product beginning to become interchangeable.”

Peter Eisenman

House VI, in Cornwall, Connecticut (1972-1975), serves as a record of a systemmatic and conceptual design process. Starting from a simple, symmetrical grid that was divided into four parts, the house transforms into a dynamic sculpture through serial iterations.

The bare walls, white and light grey colours throughout the house, and exposed structure highlight the design process. The structural elements represent the tension between reality and the symbolic, where non-functional columns remain as a reminder of the iterative process.

The walls in House VI are in constant motion. Shifting and slipping walls define the spaces within the house, and the traces of these walls can be seen in the ceilings where slits remain open, visually connecting one space to another.

[Figure 2.0.2] Wall House 2, photo by Gea Schenk, 2001, courtesy of Groninger Museum

Wall House

“Life has to do with walls; we are continuously going in and out back and forth and through them; a wall is the quickest, the thinnest, the thing we’re always transgressing, and that is why I see it as the present, the most surface condition.”

John Hejduk

Wall House 2 was originally designed in 1971 for Arthur Edward Bye to be constructed in Ridgefeld, Connecticut. Due to lack of funding, the project was not built until 2001, in Groningen, Netherlands. The house is an exploration of the reversal of a traditional house. Instead of a wall encasing the programmatic elements of the house, here the volumes are placed on either side of a dividing wall.

The wall becomes a boundary between the circulation and service portions of the house and the habitable areas. The forces the users to pass through the wall to move from one room to another.

Hejduk uses strong geometries and colours to differentiate the two opposing sides of the wall. The service elements use linear geometric shapes and neutral colours and the spaces on the opposite side of the wall use bright colours and curvilinear volumes.

2.1 Architecture as index

[Figure 2.1.1] (top) House VI, interior view of living room showing shifted walls, 1972-75, courtesy of Eisenman Architects

[Figure 2.1.2] (bottom) Wall House 2, exterior view showing wall as separator, Liao Yusheng, 2001, courtesy of ArchDaily

“The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed.”

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 2007, p. 238

In House VI, walls are in motion and as they move they create or divide spaces: Shifted planes that emphasize space. The gap they leave behind both traces their motion in space, but also allows for shadows or lights to come through to create suggestive spaces. In this decoding of the architecture, light defines a boundary and thus becomes a non-physical dividing element

In Wall House, the wall acts as an obstacle or a barrier: Wall as a divider of space. The wall separates the programmatic elements of the house from the circulation, and therefore, what is behind and in front of the wall are very different. In this decoding of the architecture, the shadow differentiates the two spaces from one another - what is behind and what is in front. The motion of the shadow also alludes to the space of circulation that is in motion, rather than the static volumes of the house.

The decoded images on the next page were originally moving gifs, and therefore, perceived as objects in motion. This is significant because, as Walter Benjamin states, the spectator understands the operations with a decoded layer of space and, more importantly, time

House VI

Removed walls defining space.

2.1.2 Wall House

The wall as a space defining and dividing element.

2.2 Time as index

[Figure 2.2.1] (top) House VI, interior view of ceiling showing traces of shifted walls, 197275, courtesy of Eisenman Architects

[Figure 2.2.2] (bottom) Wall House 2, view from the entry corridor, photo by Christian Richter, 2001, courtesy of de Architect

“So there are no temporally extended objects or events, no world enduring over time, only an instantaneous temporal slice of a world and of the objects and events within it.”

Michael Inwood, Heidegger: A very short introduction, 2000, p. 67

House VI traces the motion of the planes that make up its spaces. The walls are in constant motion, yet they are frozen in time. The gaps and lines they leave in the ground and ceiling act as reminders of the space they used to occupy, as if at any moment the elastic holding them back will snap and the walls with come back to their original position. This decoding of time in House VI is done through the medium of clay which record the history of actions performed on it. The largest image in the center represents the time that the project is situated in: frozen in time, House VI is a temporal slice of a process of design, which may or may not continue to develop.

Wall House materializes the passage of time by placing an obstacle at the moment the programmatic elements meet. This wall acts as a filter that slows down time, but also a threshold to move from one time to another. The wall is both a separator, but also the point where the two programs come together. The cotton pad with coloured water is used to decode the time in Wall House. Time moves at two different paces on either side of the wall, similar to how the concentration of water remains separate. The cotton, like the wall, is a filter that lets the to sides of water mix slowly, over time.

2.2.1 House VI

Frozen in time.

2.2.2 Wall House

Filter through.

2.3 Program as index

[Figure 2.3.1] (top) Sketch for House VI, Peter Eisenman, 1971-89, CCA archives

[Figure 2.3.2] (bottom) East elevation with detail for Wall House 2, John Hejduk, 1976, CCA archives

“...the transparent ceases to be that which is perfectly clear and becomes, instead, that which is clearly ambiguous.”

Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” 1963, p. 161

The separate programmatic elements of House VI are blurred by the shared spaces that also act as spaces of circulation. The circulation and the clearly defined spaces are interrupted by the residual gaps left by the shifted walls. These interruptions force a specific usage to the space, thus emphasizing the power of the architecture. The house is populated with literal transparencies due to the resultant slits from shifted walls. In addition to the literal transparencies, the overlapping of functions creates a set of more ambiguous transparencies

In Wall House, the wall separates the two sides of the house in to circulation space and program. Although the wall is a boundary condition, it also acts as a threshold or filter, where one must pass through the wall to move within the house. Therefore, the two programs converge across the wall. The overflow of spaces into one another across the wall reverses the opaqueness of the wall and makes it a transparent object.

The following translation of the programs in the two houses highlight the ambiguous transparencies and overlapping functions of the respective houses. In both cases that wall, or lack there of, interrupts the flow of space and emphasizes the overlapping conditions.

2.3.1 House VI

The lack of wall as an interrupter of space.

2.3.2 Wall House

The wall as an interrupter of the flow of movement.

3.1 Program as index

...round two...

[Figure 3.1.1] XXXXXXXXX In the Expanded Field, Martijn Hendriks, 2008, courtesy of Rhizome

“The kind of reading formalism demanded was one that converted transparency into opacity; one that both acknowledged the work of art itself and insisted that it force or promote that conversion.”

Rosalind Krauss, “Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom: Materialisation of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman,” 1998, p. 26

Following the ideas of Rosalind Krauss on reading architecture like a language with rule sets, signifiers, and most importantly, hidden meanings, House VI and Wall House are transcoded through language signifiers. The image on the left, which uses a part of Krauss’ essay, blacks out any reference to art in the text and image, thus transcoding the piece into a non-art piece of art.

Using this image, as well as Krauss’ text, as an example, the first transcoded piece examines the hidden symbols in the illegible text of House VI. The house can be thought of as a poem that is purposefully illegible at parts, no clear directionality. The exposed, non-functional structural elements are metaphors that allude to something, but what? What are the hidden messages they, in turn, expose?

While House VI is read as a poem, Wall House can be seen as a disorganized sentence. How does one read a sentence that does not follow any grammar rules? One where punctuation is in the center of the sentence rather than at the start and end - just like the wall. The transcoding of Wall House into language shows that as a sentence that breaks the rules, Wall House also becomes a visual poem of sorts.

3.1.1 House VI

PROCESS

PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJE CTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOB JECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROC

PROC

PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY PROCESSRECORDOBJECTHISTORY CT CT CT CT CT CT CT

House VI as a poem with hidden symbols.

ECTHISTORY

S S S O S S S P R O C E S S

O B J E C T

RECORD HISTORY

3.1.2 Wall House

L LI LIV LIVI LIVIN LIVING R KITCHEN COOKING-----------------EATING DINING BEDROOM

VINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOML VINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLI IINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIV NGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVI GROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVIN ROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVING OOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGROOMLIVINGR

House as

sentence.

ORCORRI

DOORCORRI DOOR

3.2 Material as index

[Figure 3.2.1] (top) House VI, interior view, 1971-89, courtesy of CCA archives

[Figure 3.2.2] (bottom) Wall House 2 isometric, John Hejduk, 1973, MoMA

Light and shadow in the gaps in House VI define spaces and is experienced as a changing material throughout the day. It connects spaces with others and unveils what is behind. Other than the two brightly coloured stairs, the materials in the house are all a neutral white and gray. The flatness of the colours in the house put emphasis on the abscense of material. Here, in the gaps, images of the nature beyond and changing light throughout the day bring dynamism into the house. In this step, the gaps and light that comes through them are decoded as materials in the house. A solid white colour represents the planes, and the more fluid water colour represents the changing materiality of the light.

The wall in Wall House acts as a separator between the symbolic and functional spaces. The functional areas are geometric and colourless, while the symbolic side is more fluid and colourful. One can argue that the wall is indeed a separator at first, but just like the artist’s tape, it lets colours bleed through and it can be peeled back to further emphasize the separation. The real separation comes from the absence of material in its place. The decoding of the materials show the distinct characteristic of the two sides of the house, while allowing to one understand the wall as an operational tool

“What matters with a diagram, as with the face of an instrument, is how we are to read it.”

Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 1969, p. 170

3.2.1 House VI

Decoding of light as material in House VI

3.2.2 Wall House

Decoding of functional materials in Wall House

3.3 Material as index

[Figure 3.3.1] (top) House VI, interior view of bedroom, 1972-75, courtesy of Eisenman Architects [Figure 3.3.2] (bottom) Wall House 2, detail of wall to house connection, photo by Gea Schenk, 2001, courtesy of Groninger Museum

“An apparatus that has escaped from human intention, realizes all its virtualities automatically and deviates from its program by error, works like nature.”

Vilém Flusser, “The Photograph as Post-Industrial Object: An Essay on the Ontological Standing of Photographs,” 1986, p. 330

After the initial decoding of light as a material in House VI, it is recoded in an alternate medium, where reflective foil is used to bounce light back towards the camera. Several photos with changing light conditions are taken to vary the reflections in the foil. The flat image gains depth from the moving shadows and lights.

The recoding used in House VI is applied to Wall House, where the reflective foil becomes the wall that allows light to bounce back and forth through it. This essentially explores the glass tunnels that cut through the wall at each level to act as corridors between the stair and the various rooms. As one moves through the wall, they also encounter changing light conditions. Just as the movement filters, light also filters through the wall.

Later, these images are overlayed to transcode the information from the architecture back into the abstract nature of the representation. Here we see, as described by Vilém Flusser, the virtual image deviates from its properties and starts to behave like nature: real light. Through a set of overlays and light adjustments, two final images are found that represent light as material during the day and during the night

House VI

Wall House

3.3.1 House VI

Overlayed transcoding of day and night in House VI

3.3.2 Wall House

Overlayed transcoding of day and night in Wall House

SOME FINAL WORDS...

In an attempt to reveal material and immaterial codes that exist within an architectural context, both at the larger scale of the building and the detail scale of the object, I used a combination of analog and digital methods that work together to translate hidden meaning into representational images. Starting by decoding the material qualities of the immaterial object of the gap, a dichotomous tone was set in my research that constantly juxtaposed absence of material to its purposeful presence.

The codes that the gap defined in the earlier part of the research guided the reading of the architectural projects, both in the way in which they are similar and also how they diverge. The translation of the codes from one scale to the other deepened the conclusions made in each step where the architectural scale deals with the materiality of space rather than simply material itself.

In the final steps, the research begins to transcend the dual operational system of analog and digital, and adds a third step of post digital production. Therefore, in the final part of the research, the codes that have been decoded and recoded are transcoded in one unified output...

...but just as House VI represent a slice in time of its process, the final product achieved here is just a momentary conclusion frozen in time...

References

Print:

Agrest, Diana. “Representation as Articulation Between Theory and Practice.” Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation. Ed. Stan Allen. London: Routledge, 2003: 163-177.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2007: 217-251.

Colomina, Beatriz. “Introduction: On Architecture, Production and Reproduction.” Architectureproduction. Ed. Joan Ockman and Beatriz Colomina. Vol. 2. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988: 6-23.

Evans, Robin. “Translations from Drawing to Building.” AA Files 12, 1986: 3–18.

Flusser, Vilém. “The Photograph as Post-Industrial Object: An Essay on the Ontological Standing of Photographs.” Leonardo 19, no. 4, 1986: 329–32.

Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. (I Reality Remade; IV The Theory of Notation: 6. Notation, 8. Analogs and Digits, 9. Inductive Translation, 10. Diagrams, Maps and Models; V Score, Sketch and Script). Inwood, Michael J. Heidegger: A very short introduction. Vol. 25. Oxford Paperbacks, 2000.

Rowe, C., & Slutzky, R. (1963). Perspecta, 8, 45-54. doi:10.2307/1566901

Image:

Figure 2.0.1: Eisenman Architects. “06_HOUSEVI_IMAGE6.” Digital image. Eisenman Architects, accessed April 9, 2021. https://eisenmanarchitects. com/House-VI-1975

Figure 2.0.2: Schenk, Gea. “Wall House #2.” Digital image. Groninger Museum, accessed April 9, 2021. https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/museum/ wall-house-2

Figure 2.1.1: Eisenman Architects. “06_HOUSEVI_IMAGE5.” Digital image. Eisenman Architects, accessed April 9, 2021. https://eisenmanarchitects. com/House-VI-1975

Figure 2.1.2: Yusheng, Liao. “stringio.” Digital image. ArchDaily, accessed April 9, 2021. https://www.archdaily.com/205541/ad-classics-wall-house-2john-hejduk

Figure 2.2.1: Eisenman Architects. “06_HOUSEVI_IMAGE7.” Digital image. Eisenman Architects, accessed April 9, 2021. https://eisenmanarchitects. com/House-VI-1975

Figure 2.2.2: Richter, Christian. “architect_2001_10_0087-2.” Digital image. de Architect, accessed April 9, 2021. https://www.dearchitect.nl/ projecten/wall-house-2-in-groningen-door-john-hejduk

Figure 2.3.1: Eisenman, Peter. Digital scan of Sketch for House VI. 1971-1989. DR1994:0134:056. Peter Eisenman Fonds. Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, Canada.

Figure 2.3.2: Hejduk, John. Digital scan of East elevation with detail for Wall House 2 (Bye House). 1976. DR1998:0078:007:001. John Hejduk Fonds. Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, Canada.

Figure 3.1.1: Hendriks, Martijn. “XXXXXXXXX IN THE EXPANDED FIELD.” 2008. Digital image. Rhizome, accessed April 9, 2021. http://archive. rhizome.org/artbase/55583/www.vvork.com/index.html@p=12882

Figure 3.2.1: Bartos, Adam. Digital scan of Interior view of House VI, Cornwall, Connecticut. DR1994:0134:870. Peter Eisenman Fonds. Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, Canada.

Figure 3.2.2: Hejduk, John. Digital scan of Wall House 2 (A. E. Bye House) Project, Ridgefield, Connecticut (Isometric). 1973. 1200.2000. Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Figure 3.3.1: Eisenman Architects. “06_HOUSEVI_IMAGE4.” Digital image. Eisenman Architects, accessed April 9, 2021. https://eisenmanarchitects. com/House-VI-1975

Figure 3.3.2: Schenk, Gea. “Wall House #2.” Digital image. Groninger Museum, accessed April 10, 2021. https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/ museum/wall-house-2