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Digital Quadratura Originally this animation was part of a research paper presented by Mathan Ratinam at the 2005 AHRA Conference in Nottingham. The paper has since been published as a peer reviewed article in arq (architectural research quarterly) Volume 9, numbers 3/4 2005, Cambridge University Press, under the title Falling into the Image. Additionally the animation is a key reference from a book chapter titled A Digital Renaissance: Reconnecting Architectural Representation and Cinematic Visual Effects in From Models to Drawings edited by Marco Frascari, Jonathan Hale and Bradley Starkley, Routledge 2007. Research Paper Abstract: How might emergent techniques of digital visualisation and representation enhance the way we design architectural spaces? This paper seeks to explore what architecture can learn from technologies developed in other fields, specifically considering the potential application of film visual effects for proposing architectural schemes. There was a period in history when the field of visual effects was not dominated by production houses in Hollywood, but sat clearly within the domain of architecture. This paper is interested in how contemporary architecture can reclaim a relationship to visual effects by looking back to the Renaissance and the Baroque and while looking forward to Weta Studios and productions like Lord of the Rings. The practice-based research of this paper is concerned with how visual effects techniques used in film might introduce more appropriate models for communicating architectural ideas. The thesis is three-fold: first claiming the disciplinary relevance of an ocular-centric approach, then expediently noting the time-saving technical advantages and lastly promoting the phenomenological appropriateness of the moving image. By re-appropriating contemporary techniques in visual effects, this paper explores the designing of digital representation and it’s potential. The research is particularly concerned with the area of visual effects that focuses on ocular centric techniques that begin, process and output in perspective with little or no empirical input. By moving away from empirically measured methods and toward a privileging of the view, we use digital representation to critique work in progress, indirectly enhancing the act of designing and the architectural outcome. If cinematic models resonate with our physical experience of the world might ocular orientated processes for modelling and rendering allow for a more fluid and familiar engagement in the process by the designer and a more comfortably interpretative reading of the visualisation by the audience? Privileging images over measurements by working almost entirely in perspective, the research project explores through technical exercises and design propositions the potential of more time efficient modelling techniques that would allow for a more iterative design process. By working with images as a way of ‘measuring up’ a site it becomes possible to propose, evaluate, redesign and re-evaluate the design proposition within the context of the site. In liberating the visualisation from the role of empirically representing the model, the visual effects techniques advocated here promotes the digital equivalent of the ‘dog-model’, though perhaps more eloquently. But the techniques do more than just support a designerly approach to critiquing work in progress, they also invite the person creating the visualisation and the intended audience (be they colleagues, clients or the public) into the cinematic image, to see not just the structure and the materials of the architecture but into the narrative of the site itself. The significance of this interdisciplinary exchange lies not in the technological opportunities alone for it is in this shift from analytical visualisation to interpretative representation that we can capture, investigate and explore the dynamic and ephemeral dimensions of architectural space. |
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