Final Presentation Review

The stress of the end of the semester has started to consume me to I have been lacking in blog updates.

I had my final presentation on Friday Dec 4.  It was the final checkpoint for the semester.  My semester will conclude with the production of a book laying out my case for further investigations for my thesis as well as an update to my official website.

Here is a summary of the final presentation:

My thesis proposal is to exploit the ambiguity that can exist when architectural dualities start to exist in relationship to each other creating a both~and condition which collapses the duality into a third condition.  The both~and condition produces the collapsing of the duality.

The moire utilizes a relationships between solid and void or black and white; by juxtaposing the relationships between the dualities (one not dominating the other) the moire is able to provide a both~and condition that collapses the duality into a third, separate condition.  This condition starts to form other both~and condition for other dualities.  The original moire diagram provides a presence~absence relationships.  There is a blurring of what is actually there and what is perceptually implied.  Furthermore, this relates to the relationship between two-dimensions and three-dimensionality.

The challenge has been extending the duality of the moire, since it is mostly perception-based, into the third dimension.  The both~and condition I explored is perception based.

Feedback:

The work still remains within the graphic performance realm.  The 3D offers a perception that flattens itself.  This project could progress through understanding how a similar effect that is achieved graphically could be used as an analogy for architectural performance.  Can program act like this?  (This is what I originally was seeking for my thesis, through the process I have been using I have found it difficult to break from the graphic representation in order to explore spatial relationships.)  The experience can shift through time and become a catalyst for the change.

Currently, the project, as represented in drawings, lends itself to a screen wall condition.  The models are difference and provide a different effect.  The play with distance could be interesting.  The city or urban scape finds this conditions throughout where depending on a person's proximity to an element whether it be a building, or a metal-stripe framed trash can, the perception of the object changes.

Is it a visual effect you are trying to achieve? (no)  Program can become fuzzy.  You mentioned a split personality, this represents a break.  These can be moments of threshold that collapse on itself.  Is there a way to see the individual elements and still see the effect?  Can it work at different levels and scales in that way, where you have equal understanding of the modular elements as you do the field condition as a whole?

The 2D/planar aspect is discrete and have a distinct origin being in the same direction.  The multiple points and applying multiplicity on the field push it spatially and figures start to emerge.  It starts to provide the blurring and ambiguity as the new figures emerge that are unexpected from the system itself. There could be thresholds within the drawings.  Height could be an additional element and become profiles of the secondary.  Maybe going back to an if/then statement to help navigate and negotiate the field.  Scalar shifts for moires and organization of figures can gain energy from multiple attractors.  Push it further.  You need an agenda or program for the investigation to help you navigate through the process.  Camouflage is a possible one.  Camouflaging program, blurring figures, camouflaging program, the building, scale.  How do you use this strategy as a designer?  Spatial camouflage.  Look into stealth technology as a performance based idea.  (Fractals are used in stealth technology which plays with scales and how something can look the same at each level of magnification or observation.)  Stealth technology works with perception and the bending of light and sound (or wave-based entities.)

Possible reorientation as a parameter.  Assemble, mass.  The models lack tectonics and structural levels with critical points and connections.  Try to approach it without having to use a framework within the model.  The model should provide volume that has a integrity of its own.  One problem maybe from the model resulting from a 2D based plan system.

Where do you go?  What is the path?  Is it geometry studies and pushing these geometric based drawings to their limit?  Is it finding a modern apparatus for an agenda of organization? Is it about technological systems or math as effect?  Systems embedded and other performance?

Possible inspirations are sponge, lattice, lightness, aerogel (can you vary the density to formulate a 3D camo or cloud)

Frank Barklow's 3D laser cut tubes offer an vector extruded to project light.  The length of the extrusion varies.  Similar to a Baroque language.

You have shown that you are willing to try a variety and different techniques to try to produce and expand into the 3D aspect of this project.  The 3D needs to be based more in the built world and material practice.  Find the generative ideas and the agenda for the thesis.  Is it moire?  Camouflage?  Right now it still remains flat.  It needs to work with variety of scales and distance, depth and revealing.  Devise a strategy with material for the conditions.  The diagrams can become more of a cross-section that can be built off of.  Each diagram can be a section that is built off of where the moire melts away and then reassembles through the 3D space.  It needs to get outside of the planar approach.  Adding dimensionality through extrusion.  Look at something else that does what you want.  You need an agenda or situation to be existing within the moire.  Find the spatial structure.  Overlapping.  Get rid of the framework and having something else holding the model up.  Projecting moire patterns on a body?  Does it give a new reading of the form?  Internal construction and surface making.  Get away from projection.  Find a visual language of performance.

People/ideas/elements to look at:
Hugh Ferris
Fractals
Wallace Harrison (patterning)
Aluminum facade panel for cloaking effect
Sponge
Lattice
Frank Barklow - work with 3D laser cutting
MVDRV

Response:

I am still facing the same problem I have been all semester.  Translating the initial diagram into the 3D.  My project did get reduces to the moire patterning (visual effects rather than spatial qualities) which was not was I had originally intended.  I originally intended for my thesis to be a study of the blurring, overlapping of more performance-based elements or program within a building.  I realize now that my original thesis statement did lend itself to a more visual perception based study through my original selection of dualities (solid~void, presence~absence, 2D~3D, figure~ground, etc.)  I still feel as though I have the opportunity to develop my thesis into a more performance or program based manipulation.

Currently I am processing through my old abstracts, notes, and drafts to start to pull out what was originally important to me within my thesis idea in order to develop a clearer understanding of what personally drives me in my idea.  This will help me to have a better sense of what can be generated design-wise in the idea.

Ultimately, I did not want a thesis to be a facade condition which is what it is right now.  I did not want to to be a graphical study.  My goal is to now take it into the spatial realm, separate from the graphical moire studies, in order to understand the performance and spatial implications.