The project is initiated by a response to Shinkenchiku design competition where it won a commendation. Furthermore the project is an ongoing investigation on non-linear projections and narrative architecture within a digital environment.
Concept:
We do not believe in static renaissance modes of representation. We understand plans and sections neither as a design integral document nor as a means of architectural construction. We embrace a perceptive architecture that has evolved from a narrated background and is only able to be drawn and understood in a perspective projection. We think of projections and projection planes that are capable to embody a narrative within architecture. We are interested in creating a dialogue within projection, representation and design so that the architectural representation becomes architecture and the narrative becomes projection.
The architecture we project in this scheme is related to the movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, in that he was able to transcend a Deleuzian crystal image idea within a narrative embodiment allowing for the establishment of the zone. The zone for us is an n-dimensional space embodied within architecture that acts as a 3 dimensional projection space for a 4 dimensional projection. The site in this scenario is the famous Trellick Tower in London by Erno Goldfinger. At the time it was conceptualised as a vertical city allowing the inhabitants to form an urban community but similar to the novel High-Rise by J.G. Ballard, soon a dystopian image emerged from the planned residential order. The narrative of a distorted perceptive architecture is informed and informs the scheme and constantly shifts the viewpoint from an immersed spectator to an external visitor. This creates an architecture from the within utilising the cinematic experience of the ubiquity of n-dimensional space, embodying the character, the narrative within the formal expression. Narrating Embodiment is a project that explores the boundary of experimental architecture, attempting to design and understand a cinematic zone-like space – a chthonic landscape that allows the architecture to be projected and fused within a site specific narrative. The projects transcends through functionalism and rational static description; merging instead perception with story and time with projection.
The site is defined as an ever oscillating narrative ground. It flitters between the actual of the Trellick tower estate in the west of London and the virtual of the zone-like wilderness depicted in the movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovski. Site is an amalgamation of the two states, creating a High-Rise – a Ballardian dystopian space, cinematic in its nature and narrative in its expression.
The plan was defined as a vertical orthographic projection of an object – within a cinematic architecture, it has evolved into a narrative projection plane. It is three dimensional in is form and incorporates a 4 dimensional story-line that transforms the plane to a landscape. In our scheme the chthonic landscape embodies the Tarkovskian void reflecting a psychopathic vertical society.
The section always carried the closes narrative aspects within and could best describe spatial qualities. It is a linear cut through 3 dimensional space creating a 2 dimensional section. Within the immersed 4-dimensional projective scape the section becomes an immersive space that has been generated from the character’s point of view. This opens up towards a realm of perceptive construction of possibilities, rendering them visible and believable to the viewer’s eye. In particular it deals with how the ubiquity of imagery and specifically the moving image changes how architecture is consumed at the moment and consequently projected into the future.
The elevation is the altitude within a horizontal coordinate system, a projected celestial coordinate system that uses the observer’s local horizon as the fundamental plane. This divides the sky into the upper hemisphere, and the lower hemisphere. A distortion within this horizontal equilibrium leads to a replacement of the physical thought-model with a more dynamic viewer oriented system. Within the zone the horizon becomes distorted and space becomes simulacraspace becomes scape.
Author: Tobias Klein and Eva Sommeregger, with Nikolaos Klimentidis and Graham K. Smith.
