Architectural Representation 2

Neil Spiller criticizes that animation programs have undermined the representation of space, failing to really communicate the essence of spatial arrangements and disabling the possibility of the viewer to interact with them since everything it’s given. On the contrary drawings allow us to adapt and imagine space to our own experience making them visually more powerful.One of the problems I believe that as architecture students we are confronted is that we tend to forget that computer applications are tools that enable us to generate forms or design spaces, however the reality is that we allow these programs think for us calculate and generate forms for us, which result in the generation of forms and buildings with geometrical complexity but without a true spatial and conceptual understanding and of course without transcendental originality. Because computer technologies in architecture have been only developed for two decades we still need to understand how to elaborate a process of design and thought instead of just learn how to use them by inertia. (I least I do)

Architectural Representation

Perez-Gomez and Pelletier discuss in the Perspective Hinge the progress of the representation of space through perspective and how the cultural notions of a determined period influenced on the representation of architectural drawings. During antiquity among Greek philosophers the concept of distance made it possible to represent space by triggering the need to illustrate it graphically and geometrically. The studies of optics and anatomy took the concept of perspective to a new level, perspective naturalis, were the intent of Greek philosophers like Euclid was to understand the metaphysics of light and the functioning of the eye to translate it into geometrical arrangements. In renaissance the aim of the artists and architects was to generate perspectives that bring together artificial geometrical constructions and optic geometry reconciling esthetics and techniques. Renaissance architects were able to design eternal architecture merging art and mathematics, geometry and god then how as architects will be able to reconcile the advent of digital tools with traditional representation in order to generate “truthful and poetical representation of architectural space”?

VIideo-désastre

This animation is my first attempt, it was unsuccessful it lacks intention and its an example of what Spiller criticizes about animations.

KINETIC SURFACE

LOFTING

I lofted body contour lines extracted from four frames of wu shu motion sequence

TIMELINE

BODY POSITION IN TIME. LATERAL AND FRONTAL VIEW

Folds

Vidler identifies a new process of design developed with digital technology. Have made architecture and the theory of architecture have replaced the ideals of modernism and post modernism, where architecture is generated by exterior and interior forces that generate forms and residual spaces. Vilder establishes that our social context has generated the distortion of the space producing a spatial warping which can be psychological or caused by the intersection of different arts that conform our culture giving the opportunity the artist and architects to understand space without boundaries. For instance folds allow joining s forces space and time, interior and exterior different abstract concepts for a formal and spatial configuration that could have not been developed without digital technologies, because it allows breaking mental paradigms and rules that shape our world. Vidler analyzes Lynn from a more formal and spatial point of view, and my understating of Lynn’s articles he theorizes more about progress and the essence of body rather than space and architecture.

Yuval Zohar Wushu performance

What first came to my mind when reading Gregg Lynn’s articles was another text I read on fractal mathematics (I wish I remembered the name to cite it), but much of the configuration ideas of Gregg Lynn seem to rely on this type of geometry that from a simple pattern, form, body, line, etc. a series of more complex geometric patterns generate it and at the same time these more complex patterns are generated by other and more complex geometries. I remember the text explained that as humans we tend to abstract and idealize everything and see holistically edges bodies and shapes, the example given was the human figure we see the edge of the skin with space and we tend to see a simple curves that delineate our body but if seen with more precision our skin has pores, follicles, hairs that are formed by an infinite number of complex geometries, the same with the edge of a tree and every object that surrounds us.

From conceptualization to materialization

To me it is shocking to read again the “manifesto” of Lynn since six months ago I visited one of his exhibitions at the Vitra factory in Weil am Rhein. The exhibition consisted of a couple of chairs lamps and two walls to display his designs, I felt a disconnection between what he proposes in theory and what I saw at the exhibition, I did like some the objects at the exhibition but somehow I couldn’t relate him as the author of Animate Form which I had already read.I thought he was another architect following the same trend of computer modeling without a solid theory. Perhaps being at a building designed by the architect transmits a stronger sense of his ideas. Lynn’s main idea is to have dynamic designs that would react to external forces. To me the chairs he designed for Vitra where quite static and traditional I would have felt more convinced if he had proposed a set of chairs made out of a material that adapted to each body type or position therefore corresponding to each external generating force; however the chairs to me just seem taken out of a Barbarella movie, nothing revolutionary. I’m not trying to diminish the architect’s work and as a matter of fact I did like the pink chair, the other did look a little kitchesque, I hope that was his intention or maybe it was the fur. But the underlying theory is the crucial matter of his work; the result might not be as powerful, at least in industrial design.