final project03

The Real and the Imaginary

The work is to discuss the space between the real and the imaginary, the transaction between the projected house and the object. It is an interpretation of a space between the actual object and the idea of the space that the object carries with it.

Bits of the objects in the (manor) house (table lag, skirting board, etc. the REAL) are extracted, recomposed, and projected, forming the shadow house (the IMAGINARY). The drawing constructed as a series of pieces connected as stoppage, talks about the idea of reflected space. Every element of every piece discusses a memory or a trace of something in the system. They are made to move in a way to create these pieces and they are the pieces between the imaginary and the real. They are projecting pieces to create the idea on the wall of a series of architectural spaces which have been constructed by the shadows, projected from the movement of the systems.

Memory Suitcase

The suitcases (supposed to be three, the finishing of the cases is different, Dickens’ is the most worn one because it has been passed down form generations to generations.) are containers for the journeys of each character (Three writers: Pope, Hawthorne and Dickens).

The idea of having parts of the ornaments or objects in each place that the character has “been” to, and put them in a suitcase divided into 9, is to form a journey image/memory theater of the characters, a way for them to tell the space of the manor house in their perceptions.

This idea comes from Frances A. Yates’ book The Art of Memory. he discusses how people use “places” for memory to embed in:

In order to form a series of places in memory, he says, a building is to be remembered, as spacious and varied a one as possible, the forecourt, the living room, bedrooms, and parlours, not omitting statues and other ornaments with which the rooms are decorated.

The suitcase is a method to deal with the architectural space in literature and memory. It works like a recorder to form the space out of text, to remind the writer of his experience of the past, and to illustrate that experience to the reader, an image source for the reader to create his imaginary experience of the space.

Some notes on the book "The Poetics of Space"

Inquiry:

How can architectural space be evoked by the reader/ different people, to have the similar space quality, despite the barriers of generations and geometry boundary, distinct personal experience?

The power of literature:

The function of literature: poetry/imagination puts literature in a state of emergence, in which life becomes alive/the reader’s own through its vivid description.
Through reading, one has the feeling of being at the spot (emerging). That he has transcended the time to live the life of the writer’s.

Project idea:

It (part of my project) talks about the reader’s translation of the writing and making it his own version of understanding the space being described. And that could be so “real” that deep within his mind forming his memory of the virtual experienced world.
(Three suitcases is to be designed.) The suitcase is a memory theater where loci are remembered with detail ornaments. It is carrier of a journey that they (the three characters) want to hold and suspend the time of being. Therefore, the suit case can be seen as a space for compressed time and events.

7-Imaginary room

An imaginary room was constructed as a remembering space to discuss the idea of one thing is contained in another thing in another system…

In this room, there is a shelf for telescopes, a coat as a table cloth with a watch in the pocket and letters as stitching line, together with the coat there are some measuring tools on the table, on the right hand wall are the fans composed of gas valves and spiral solid surface.

Telescopes: Books have volume and room has volume. Through the telescope you might look at different volumes of the room. So that attaches itself to books and reading. The telescopes sit on the table as a set of device looking through, awaiting for the sunrise, to see through the topographic changes of the room. And the spectacle case made of compasses is for measuring texture, light, duration and transparency of surface; Coat as table cloth: The table cloth is the idea of twisting towards the conversations shifted and hidden in the table cloth. The fans on the wall are opening and shutting and reconnect the object in the room.

6-Solid transparency and seeing through

I explored the idea of seeing through as the transparency of the solid in air, the idea of spaces between occupied and unoccupied, the clearness of seeing and understanding, the ability of imagination of filling the gaps between them.

The model of telescope/pocket watch derived form the transformed column head. The lenses are made of letters and holes and the spatial gaps. The idea is that with this lens, you look through the surface of the site and the lens is a connector between language and the space, within the idea how writers composes with letters, words and means, ideas which are imaginary.

The letter lenses can be rotated to form different combination of reading space and through the magnifying glass, space formed by two letter lenses is stretching and distorted, reconstructing the solid surface of what you see through. Thus it is a timing machine that you can see directly the changing of light and surface over time. (fig. last drawing)

The transparency of solid surface can also be seen as the shifting topography over time. Based on Vasseleu’s idea of light as perception to experience thing, this drawing (fig. first to third drawings) tends to discuss the changing topography of text stretching and moving on the floor casting through light.

5-starting tatic

01- Spectacle case
(Left drawing) The light coming through the spectacle case when it is opened. And inside the case there is a small instrument – a telescope (right drawing) for poring light down and seeing through the telescope… a Deja-vu telescope that you can pick up…

02- Telescope
The telescope is a light filter that and through it “things” are projected from the table, onto the floor.

03-The crosier/table leg: two kinds of transparency
Solid transparency -- the idea of seeing through as the transparency of the solid in air.
It is the transparency of air; here the essence of transparency is lightness, seeing through. That in my project, not only the acetate paper can be used to present transparency but also something that itself is not transparent but could bring about airy space (like hollow out).

04- Fan on the wall
Fan on the wall: filtering air and light

05- Thermal deviceThermal device: detects the temperature of writing and stores the heat and releases that heat in accordance with reader, forming part of the experience.

4(2)- Cutting, opening and shutting

Drawings:

C (the first three)
Comment:
It might be the ceiling under the table. When you pull part of the table down, the light come through…
D (the forth one)
Comment:
It reminds me of … old type writer
E (the last one)
It’s the telescope of year 1718 through which the light projects the spiral staircase of 1517 on to the floor of 1818…

Next drawing:
Spectacle case sitting on the table and when you open it, there’s a telescope in it.

4(1)- Cutting, opening and shutting

Tactic:

Cut up thin piece of paper to get a line. When you pull the line, it can go through the original drawing to create space. So that the solid is moved away and let light come through.

Aim:
Create the column head as top of the leg of table, and create the table top as coat. In the coat there’s glasses case. When you open it, there’s a telescope and they are all made of paper, unfolded for looking through the system. They are all things from different points in time.

Drawings:

A (the first two)
Comment:
It is delicate and talks about transparency, light, geometry and cutting, the flow and movement of surface, colour and depth. The background should be subtle.
B(the last one)
Comment:Hard modeling and rigid, random and become just a thing.

To be continue...

Term2. week3.3 Mirage

A pigeon fancier has just raced his pigeons, from the drawing room to a pigeon house. The image of drawing room is unreal; it’s a mirage of a distance space. And the people in drawing room are racing funs with unforeseeable changes.

Term2. week3.2 Skirting board

A drawing to see the changes of the style of skirting board, from medieval to Georgian to Victoria time. The drawing tries to discuss the functional changes of the skirting board as well, that it serves as interface of two dimensional surface but its height changed according to the change of living style (e.g. the change of furniture layout).

Term2. week3.1 Drawing Room and Pigeon House

Drawing Room and Pigeon House

In Alexander Pope’s account of Stanton Harcourt manor house, there was a pigeon house that in his imagination a drawing room.
The drawing discusses the connection between actual and virtual world. That the actual world sometimes violently breaks the virtual imagination, the link/barrier between them is weak and fragile.

on site photo_Stanton Harcourt

Term 2 new understanding

What is it:

An architecture that changes over time

The architecture that contains the traces of changes

Methods:

1. Showing the hidden changes by steaming on nets, make the former form visible and disappearing slowly. Reminding the changes form present to past and from past to present.

2. Mainly divide my project into three periods of time: the Alexander Pope (1688-1744); the Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864, Dickens was in the same period with Hawthorne and he had not visited the house); the modern (21st century)

The style of objects that changed:
A. the architrave
B. the skirt of wall
C. the leg of table
D. the (iron-nailed) door
…..

So there are a series of shunt architectures that deal with the change of styles of the objects listed above.

And during the performance of each SHUNT, part of it will leave trace of a certain time and these traces come together to form a new moment that may invoke/remind you of one of the period (Pope, Hawthorne or modern). But the certain moment, in fact, is a combination of different contents of different time.

These factors will be observed and presented: changes of light, texture, color and structure….Fluid (paint?), solid (sand, grass?), gaseous (fog, steam, light?) materials will be needed.

3. NEW THOUGHT/METHOD:

Every one in the world is like a camera. So within a same space, there is no same perspective as to everyone.

So if showing you something with an opposite angle to the one you view. You may not recognize it immediately. But you will feel familiar with it. However odd the perspective might be, it contain almost everything you’ve been through. The difference lies in the minor role becoming the major role, or vice versa.

The situation will become harder to recognize when experiencing the same thing at different time and different perspective. That causes you “déjà vu”: familiarity and strangeness at the same time. This enquires about an architectural question: recognition through time. People’s love of art changes over time, and the style of architecture changes accordingly. But there is no defined line between styles, the more information architecture contains, the more complicated to identify its style.

Therefore, multi-perspective will be introduced in my project.

One sentence of the description that I think can be developed more in the project:
Upon opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced by a flight of birds about your ears and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that is the pigeon house.

steps

Though sensors are not needed, this post is to document my footsteps.