Virtually Handcrafted: An Investigation of Immersive Architectural Design Processes

<p>Architects use media such as drawings and models to test and better understand their designs. These media are frequently scaled for convenience and reduced to two dimensions for clarity; however, in relying on these methods, the direct and visceral experience of inhabiting space is neglected. Phenomenologists such as Juhani Pallasmaa point out that this problem is exacerbated by the picture plane. The flat page or screen acts as an impenetrable window, excluding the viewer from a truly embodied appreciation of the designed spatial qualities. This research investigates the use of virtual reality (VR) as a tool for conceiving architecture without alienating the designer from the user’s perspective. It is suggested that the holistic and subjective approach of immersive media is a necessary complement to the more abstracted and objective views of architectural tradition: plan, section, and elevation. The recent availability of consumer-grade VR allows the testing of this opportunity without many of the technological limitations of research done in the 1990’s. This research aims to describe tendencies of VR design and thus guide the incorporation of immersive technologies into contemporary practice. To study the impact of VR, a real-time engine is used to develop an interactive program which allows the modelling of conceptual designs while immersed within them. Its efficacy is studied with three groups (architecture students, architects, and members of the public) from which quantitative and qualitative data is collected. By identifying the unique benefits of such tools, it is proposed how each group could make good use of the technology and extend the abilities of their existing workflows.</p>

Virtually Handcrafted: An Investigation of Immersive Architectural Design Processes

<p>Architects use media such as drawings and models to test and better understand their designs. These media are frequently scaled for convenience and reduced to two dimensions for clarity; however, in relying on these methods, the direct and visceral experience of inhabiting space is neglected. Phenomenologists such as Juhani Pallasmaa point out that this problem is exacerbated by the picture plane. The flat page or screen acts as an impenetrable window, excluding the viewer from a truly embodied appreciation of the designed spatial qualities. This research investigates the use of virtual reality (VR) as a tool for conceiving architecture without alienating the designer from the user’s perspective. It is suggested that the holistic and subjective approach of immersive media is a necessary complement to the more abstracted and objective views of architectural tradition: plan, section, and elevation. The recent availability of consumer-grade VR allows the testing of this opportunity without many of the technological limitations of research done in the 1990’s. This research aims to describe tendencies of VR design and thus guide the incorporation of immersive technologies into contemporary practice. To study the impact of VR, a real-time engine is used to develop an interactive program which allows the modelling of conceptual designs while immersed within them. Its efficacy is studied with three groups (architecture students, architects, and members of the public) from which quantitative and qualitative data is collected. By identifying the unique benefits of such tools, it is proposed how each group could make good use of the technology and extend the abilities of their existing workflows.</p>

The House of Marie Shannon

<p>This thesis creatively explores the architectural implications present in the photographs by New Zealand photographer Marie Shannon. The result of this exploration is a house for Shannon. The focus is seven of Shannon's interior panoramas from 1985-1987 in which architectural space is presented as a domestic stage. In these photograph's furniture and objects are the props and Shannon is an actress. This performance, with Shannon both behind and in front of her camera, creates a double insight into her world; architecture as a stage to domestic life, and a photographers view of domestic architecture. Shannon's view on the world enables a greater understanding to our ordinary, domestic lives. Photography is a revealing process that teaches us to see more richly in terms of detail, shading, texture, light and shadow. Through an engagement with photographs and understanding architectural space through a photographer's eye, the hidden, secret or unnoticed aspects to Shannon's reality will be revealed. This insight into another's reality may in turn enable a deeper understanding of our own. The methodology was a revealing process that involved experimenting with Shannon's panoramic photographs. Models and drawing, through photographic techniques, lead to insights both formally in three dimensions and at surface level in two dimensions. These techniques and insights were applied to the site through the framework of a camera obscura. Shannon's new home is created by looking at her photographs with an architect's 'eye'. Externally the home acts as a closed vessel, a camera obscura. But internally rich and intriguing forms, surfaces, textures and shadings are created. Just as the camera obscura projects an exterior scene onto the interior, so does the home. Shannon will inhabit this projection of the shadows which oppose 30 O'Neill Street, Ponsonby, Auckland; her past home and site of her photographs. Photographers, and in particular Shannon, look at the architectural world with fresh eyes, free from an architectural tradition. Photography and the camera enable an improved power of sight. More is revealed to the camera. Beauty is seen in the ordinary, with detail, tone, texture, light and dark fully revealed. As a suspended moment, a deeper understanding and opportunity is created to observe and appreciate this beauty. Through designing with a photographer's eye greater insight is gained into Shannon's 'reality'. This 'revealing' process acts as a means of teaching us how to see pictorial beauty that is inherent in our ordinary lives. This is the beauty that is often hidden in secret, due to our unseeing eyes. This project converts the photographs beauty back into three dimensional architecture.</p>

The House of Marie Shannon

<p>This thesis creatively explores the architectural implications present in the photographs by New Zealand photographer Marie Shannon. The result of this exploration is a house for Shannon. The focus is seven of Shannon's interior panoramas from 1985-1987 in which architectural space is presented as a domestic stage. In these photograph's furniture and objects are the props and Shannon is an actress. This performance, with Shannon both behind and in front of her camera, creates a double insight into her world; architecture as a stage to domestic life, and a photographers view of domestic architecture. Shannon's view on the world enables a greater understanding to our ordinary, domestic lives. Photography is a revealing process that teaches us to see more richly in terms of detail, shading, texture, light and shadow. Through an engagement with photographs and understanding architectural space through a photographer's eye, the hidden, secret or unnoticed aspects to Shannon's reality will be revealed. This insight into another's reality may in turn enable a deeper understanding of our own. The methodology was a revealing process that involved experimenting with Shannon's panoramic photographs. Models and drawing, through photographic techniques, lead to insights both formally in three dimensions and at surface level in two dimensions. These techniques and insights were applied to the site through the framework of a camera obscura. Shannon's new home is created by looking at her photographs with an architect's 'eye'. Externally the home acts as a closed vessel, a camera obscura. But internally rich and intriguing forms, surfaces, textures and shadings are created. Just as the camera obscura projects an exterior scene onto the interior, so does the home. Shannon will inhabit this projection of the shadows which oppose 30 O'Neill Street, Ponsonby, Auckland; her past home and site of her photographs. Photographers, and in particular Shannon, look at the architectural world with fresh eyes, free from an architectural tradition. Photography and the camera enable an improved power of sight. More is revealed to the camera. Beauty is seen in the ordinary, with detail, tone, texture, light and dark fully revealed. As a suspended moment, a deeper understanding and opportunity is created to observe and appreciate this beauty. Through designing with a photographer's eye greater insight is gained into Shannon's 'reality'. This 'revealing' process acts as a means of teaching us how to see pictorial beauty that is inherent in our ordinary lives. This is the beauty that is often hidden in secret, due to our unseeing eyes. This project converts the photographs beauty back into three dimensional architecture.</p>

Stone Sculpture

Decorative stone sculpture is one of the most enduring and prestigious forms of decoration in Byzantine buildings of all kinds and from the empire’s whole history. Whether serving as support critical to infrastructure, or as pure adornment, this sculpture was a hallmark of the Byzantine architectural tradition. Often, it indicated the highest levels of patronage. Sculpted stone elements used in the decoration of buildings often included columns, capitals, and entablature blocks; moldings; cornices; window and door frames; fountains; sarcophagi and architectonic frames for arcosolia, or niche tombs; furnishings, including church altars, ciboria, ambos, baptismal fonts, and templon screens, as well as domestic items such as tables, seating, and shelving; and decorated stone panels displaying dedicatory or commemorative inscriptions.

The Architectural Tradition of Ponnani, Kerala: A Historic Malabar Port Town

Ponnani, a historic port town located at the mouth of the Bharathappuzha River on the Arabian Sea, was a prominent trading center on the Malabar coast of Kerala, India, in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is one of Malabar’s few surviving historic towns, with its heritage sites intact along with its building types, historic streets and alleys, local culture, and traditions. But some of its historic buildings are on the verge of dereliction and need immediate attention. This study attempts to convey an understanding of Ponnani, with an analysis based on field visits and existing literature. The relationship between the region’s architecture and landscape and current threats to its heritage is explored. Its vanishing traditional knowledge systems and vernacular architectural types are also discussed, in what may serve as a reference for adaptive use by future generations.

Translation and Continuity of Tradition: An Ongoing Dialogue in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Though short, Aotearoa/New Zealand’s history is rich and holds an abundance of knowledge preserved in the form of songs, beliefs, practices, and narratives that inform this country’s unique place in the world as well as the identity of its people. This paper observes that with migratory history and a heritage of colonization, the people of Aotearoa/New Zealand express three identities: indigenous, colonial and migrant, all with a claim to appropriate representation in the country’s built fabric. It discusses the current state of knowledge by looking at the history and architectural tradition manifested in Auckland, the largest and fastest-growing city in Aotearoa. It adds that further research is required to understand and develop an appropriate methodology to address Auckland’s growing multiculturalism, which lacks adequate expression.

The Gilded Interior: French Style and American Renaissance

ABSTRACT In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, New York was seized by a passion for things French in interior decoration. The influx of French eighteenth-century decorative arts from London and Paris exerted a powerful influence over the imaginations of a new millionaire class, while the emergence of the professional dealer-decorator established channels for the incorporation of these materials into the luxury residence. While these interiors were developed in collaboration with leading US architects such as Richard Morris Hunt and George B. Post, they also posed a subtle challenge to the discourse of intellectualism developed on architects’ behalf. Governed by issues of taste and commerce as well as by artistic judgement, these French interiors presented a compelling vision of aristocratic stature that was at once in keeping, and in conflict, with the aspirations of an American Renaissance. This article considers the role of eighteenth-century French-style interiors in the articulation of a ‘civilised’ architectural tradition in the United States during the so-called Gilded Age. Focusing on the private mansion, it reconsiders the notion of the American Renaissance as a principally academic movement by calling attention to the ways in which it also responded to the requirements of the elite class as well as the commercial marketplace.

Tange and Kuma: Lessons of Symbol and Context

<p><b>Aotearoa New Zealand’s architectural landscape has been said to rely on other nations as well as carrying the residual effects of colonisation within its built environment through the mimicking of European and Anglo-American styles (Bird, 1992). Despite the increasing profile of what has been a continuous Māori architectural tradition, since colonisation New Zealand’s indigenous Māori culture generally has had a diminished presence. There are successful examples of New Zealand’s bi-cultural heritage, but these instances are few. A large portion of the examples that do attempt to represent this bi-culturalism are usually watered down to iconographic representations of traditional art and architecture. </b></p> <p>This research explores ways in which New Zealand’s architectural identity can better reflect New Zealand’s own society, culture, materiality, and nationhood. In order to do this, the focus of this research takes a radical approach turning to a study of the career of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (1913-1945) who has been able to successfully confront issues of tradition, society, and nationhood through architectural designs. The intent of this research is not to duplicate Tange’s style. It is rather that through a series of studies, Tange’s methodologies and processes related to issues of tradition, society, and nationhood are examined and applied. Tange’s modernist work drew from tradition to develop a renewed design sensibility in a contemporary Japanese idiom. His approach is examined to determine a strategy that could reinforce characteristics of New Zealand’s nationhood through architectural design. </p> <p>To extend the study beyond Tange’s career, the career of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (b. 1954) is analysed for the contemporary perspective his work brings to some of the issues that Tange confronted. This approach is applied to the design for a new public library in Wellington, where the findings from this case study are implemented amongst issues pertaining to society, culture, and nationhood in order to continue the development of New Zealand’s architectural identity. </p> <p>This design is also used in an exploration to discover how a decolonised library building could be created in New Zealand. Libraries in their current form are mainly seen as repositories that accommodate access to physical and digital forms of information. This design considers alternative ways in which information can be shared and accessed that do not currently exist within New Zealand’s library models. The effectiveness of this process is then reflected upon and conclusions are drawn.</p>

Tange and Kuma: Lessons of Symbol and Context

<p><b>Aotearoa New Zealand’s architectural landscape has been said to rely on other nations as well as carrying the residual effects of colonisation within its built environment through the mimicking of European and Anglo-American styles (Bird, 1992). Despite the increasing profile of what has been a continuous Māori architectural tradition, since colonisation New Zealand’s indigenous Māori culture generally has had a diminished presence. There are successful examples of New Zealand’s bi-cultural heritage, but these instances are few. A large portion of the examples that do attempt to represent this bi-culturalism are usually watered down to iconographic representations of traditional art and architecture. </b></p> <p>This research explores ways in which New Zealand’s architectural identity can better reflect New Zealand’s own society, culture, materiality, and nationhood. In order to do this, the focus of this research takes a radical approach turning to a study of the career of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (1913-1945) who has been able to successfully confront issues of tradition, society, and nationhood through architectural designs. The intent of this research is not to duplicate Tange’s style. It is rather that through a series of studies, Tange’s methodologies and processes related to issues of tradition, society, and nationhood are examined and applied. Tange’s modernist work drew from tradition to develop a renewed design sensibility in a contemporary Japanese idiom. His approach is examined to determine a strategy that could reinforce characteristics of New Zealand’s nationhood through architectural design. </p> <p>To extend the study beyond Tange’s career, the career of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (b. 1954) is analysed for the contemporary perspective his work brings to some of the issues that Tange confronted. This approach is applied to the design for a new public library in Wellington, where the findings from this case study are implemented amongst issues pertaining to society, culture, and nationhood in order to continue the development of New Zealand’s architectural identity. </p> <p>This design is also used in an exploration to discover how a decolonised library building could be created in New Zealand. Libraries in their current form are mainly seen as repositories that accommodate access to physical and digital forms of information. This design considers alternative ways in which information can be shared and accessed that do not currently exist within New Zealand’s library models. The effectiveness of this process is then reflected upon and conclusions are drawn.</p>