Toward an Electronic Ephemera: Exploring Architectural Atmosphere in Real-time Virtual Engines

<p>Architectural visualisation is often viewed with a degree of hesitancy by the architectural profession, for a perceived lack of criticality in the methods and outputs – particularly with the rise of hyper-real still imagery production. However, photography too suffers from a certain disconnect from an authentic experience of space, which we experience through our moving within it, our sensory gamut stimulated by the atmosphere memorable architecture possesses. This atmosphere is a holistic assemblage of design decisions made by the building designer, connected to mass, light, materiality, sound, among others. The field of gaming has been able to deploy many of these characteristics in virtual space for decades in some manner, and the tools used have been refined to the point where they are technically, and fiscally accessible to architecture. This thesis proposes that real-time virtual engines, as used by game designers, can extend the field of architectural representation and design, by better conveying a sense of architectural atmosphere and providing increased immersion in virtual space compared to traditional techniques. It first seeks to define what architectural atmosphere may be recognised as, and how it may be caused to manifest, and then applies these findings to virtual space as a means to test the relationship between the real and unreal. Further to this, it applies this methodology to an iterative design process of both an architectural and virtual nature, with a final output that demonstrates the result of both concurrently.</p>

Toward an Electronic Ephemera: Exploring Architectural Atmosphere in Real-time Virtual Engines

<p>Architectural visualisation is often viewed with a degree of hesitancy by the architectural profession, for a perceived lack of criticality in the methods and outputs – particularly with the rise of hyper-real still imagery production. However, photography too suffers from a certain disconnect from an authentic experience of space, which we experience through our moving within it, our sensory gamut stimulated by the atmosphere memorable architecture possesses. This atmosphere is a holistic assemblage of design decisions made by the building designer, connected to mass, light, materiality, sound, among others. The field of gaming has been able to deploy many of these characteristics in virtual space for decades in some manner, and the tools used have been refined to the point where they are technically, and fiscally accessible to architecture. This thesis proposes that real-time virtual engines, as used by game designers, can extend the field of architectural representation and design, by better conveying a sense of architectural atmosphere and providing increased immersion in virtual space compared to traditional techniques. It first seeks to define what architectural atmosphere may be recognised as, and how it may be caused to manifest, and then applies these findings to virtual space as a means to test the relationship between the real and unreal. Further to this, it applies this methodology to an iterative design process of both an architectural and virtual nature, with a final output that demonstrates the result of both concurrently.</p>

THINK BIG, act small

<p>Porirua City is twenty minutes north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. The city is fifty years young and is home to the youngest demographic in the country. The city is culturally diverse but lacks a clear architectural representation of this cultural diversity. The city has developed around a beautiful harbour but the waterfront is underutilised in the city’s urban design. THINK BIG, act small proposes a design strategy that re-invents Porirua City’s urban future by bringing people back to its neglected water-edge. The proposition explores how design as process and outcome can empower a community for the future of a city through spatial agency and social engagement. The thesis explores the designer’s role in this process as landscape architect, architect, and social activist. A series of large, medium and small scale interventions are proposed. The Strategy is presented in three parts: 1. The Toolkit: a kit of architectural ideas designed to re-think the city’s urban environment around its relationship to water. These ideas can be deployed over time. 2. Two Temporary Projects: two small interventions from The Toolkit are tested in Porirua. An art installation and a community pop-up space are used to initiate conversations around the future of the city with people of the city. 3. The Big Move: a series of design moves, both big and small, are proposed as a composite vision for the future of Porirua. The proposition includes outcomes from the community pop-up space. The Big Move proposes a constructed wetland park, a series of blue-green streets, public pools, and housing. The aim is to establish new ecosystems that ease flooding, improve water quality, provide catalyst areas for economic growth, and create new social spaces for the city. The design aims to draw the harbour into the city. Polynesian and Maori attitudes towards land and water are integrated in the design: land is boundless and water is a bridge. A park, Te Awaura Park, is proposed as a ‘soft’ edge to the city’s existing boundary. The narrative of the park expresses the neighbourhood characterstics unique to each suburb in Porirua. The park aims to create a true local space, a space celebrating the city’s people.</p>

Magister Ludi: Hermeneutics in Architectural Representation

<p>Written narrative has the ability to enchant the imagination of a person into a heightened emotional state, all without being directly visual. How, when existing almost entirely within a visual sense, does architecture and interior space so often lack this quality? How can I design spaces that will move me with as much impact as a few words on a page? Spurring from a frustration in attempting to understand my own design motivations as a student of interior architecture, this research grew from two seeds of interest planted throughout my life; an affinity with the visually artistic and the capturing mystery of written narrative. How can the translation of written narrative help to enhance the visual representation of interior architecture?</p>

THINK BIG, act small

<p>Porirua City is twenty minutes north of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. The city is fifty years young and is home to the youngest demographic in the country. The city is culturally diverse but lacks a clear architectural representation of this cultural diversity. The city has developed around a beautiful harbour but the waterfront is underutilised in the city’s urban design. THINK BIG, act small proposes a design strategy that re-invents Porirua City’s urban future by bringing people back to its neglected water-edge. The proposition explores how design as process and outcome can empower a community for the future of a city through spatial agency and social engagement. The thesis explores the designer’s role in this process as landscape architect, architect, and social activist. A series of large, medium and small scale interventions are proposed. The Strategy is presented in three parts: 1. The Toolkit: a kit of architectural ideas designed to re-think the city’s urban environment around its relationship to water. These ideas can be deployed over time. 2. Two Temporary Projects: two small interventions from The Toolkit are tested in Porirua. An art installation and a community pop-up space are used to initiate conversations around the future of the city with people of the city. 3. The Big Move: a series of design moves, both big and small, are proposed as a composite vision for the future of Porirua. The proposition includes outcomes from the community pop-up space. The Big Move proposes a constructed wetland park, a series of blue-green streets, public pools, and housing. The aim is to establish new ecosystems that ease flooding, improve water quality, provide catalyst areas for economic growth, and create new social spaces for the city. The design aims to draw the harbour into the city. Polynesian and Maori attitudes towards land and water are integrated in the design: land is boundless and water is a bridge. A park, Te Awaura Park, is proposed as a ‘soft’ edge to the city’s existing boundary. The narrative of the park expresses the neighbourhood characterstics unique to each suburb in Porirua. The park aims to create a true local space, a space celebrating the city’s people.</p>

Magister Ludi: Hermeneutics in Architectural Representation

<p>Written narrative has the ability to enchant the imagination of a person into a heightened emotional state, all without being directly visual. How, when existing almost entirely within a visual sense, does architecture and interior space so often lack this quality? How can I design spaces that will move me with as much impact as a few words on a page? Spurring from a frustration in attempting to understand my own design motivations as a student of interior architecture, this research grew from two seeds of interest planted throughout my life; an affinity with the visually artistic and the capturing mystery of written narrative. How can the translation of written narrative help to enhance the visual representation of interior architecture?</p>

A permanent tent: A retrospective and reconsideration of the A-Frame Chalet in New Zealand

<p>The mid twentieth century A-Frame chalet holds a special place in the memories of generations of New Zealanders. Reminiscent of summer and winter getaways, it is perhaps the most poignant architectural representation of leisure and relaxation. The novelty of unconventional sleeping arrangements, intimate spatial dynamics and the somewhat ephemeral nature of the typology combined to imbue the A-Frame with a strong emotional association. This research intends to harness the nostalgic connotations and use this, along with contemporary interior architectural theory, to reinterpret the A-Frame as a relevant form of accommodation suitable for twenty-first century vacationers and permanent inhabitants alike. Early New Zealand A-Frames were supplied as kit sets to be erected by owners with rudimentary knowledge of construction techniques. This ‘low-end’ means of arrival, understandable given the purpose of the dwelling, resulted in a typology that was regarded as a lesser relative to the primary (and more conventional) home. Awkward interior spaces were regarded as novel and tolerable for the duration of the vacation. There is limited academic publication on the A-Frame Chalet and its place in New Zealand architectural history. The aim of this research is to identify the key proponents of the style and use this as a base for a modern reinterpretation encompassing spatial and material issues. The modern tendency toward compact housing and preservation of architecturally distinctive buildings favours a new appreciation of the A-Frame. A reevaluation will address limitations of the original and re-interpret the A-Frame from nostalgic novelty to spatially responsive contemporary architecture.</p>

A permanent tent: A retrospective and reconsideration of the A-Frame Chalet in New Zealand

<p>The mid twentieth century A-Frame chalet holds a special place in the memories of generations of New Zealanders. Reminiscent of summer and winter getaways, it is perhaps the most poignant architectural representation of leisure and relaxation. The novelty of unconventional sleeping arrangements, intimate spatial dynamics and the somewhat ephemeral nature of the typology combined to imbue the A-Frame with a strong emotional association. This research intends to harness the nostalgic connotations and use this, along with contemporary interior architectural theory, to reinterpret the A-Frame as a relevant form of accommodation suitable for twenty-first century vacationers and permanent inhabitants alike. Early New Zealand A-Frames were supplied as kit sets to be erected by owners with rudimentary knowledge of construction techniques. This ‘low-end’ means of arrival, understandable given the purpose of the dwelling, resulted in a typology that was regarded as a lesser relative to the primary (and more conventional) home. Awkward interior spaces were regarded as novel and tolerable for the duration of the vacation. There is limited academic publication on the A-Frame Chalet and its place in New Zealand architectural history. The aim of this research is to identify the key proponents of the style and use this as a base for a modern reinterpretation encompassing spatial and material issues. The modern tendency toward compact housing and preservation of architecturally distinctive buildings favours a new appreciation of the A-Frame. A reevaluation will address limitations of the original and re-interpret the A-Frame from nostalgic novelty to spatially responsive contemporary architecture.</p>

Archiving Fragments of Time

<p><b>Beneath the urban concrete of Wellington city lies a plethora of lost stories and voices, sometimes only accessible as fragments, which should contribute to the rich polyvocal narratives of a site. Recognition of these stories, even as fragments, enables local inhabitants and a wider audience to begin to understand the significance of place.</b></p> <p>Heritage stories transform from one time period to the next, creating overlapping layers of a site’s identity evolving over time. Each layer, while potentially representing its own unique story, contributes to the meta-narrative of a place. This design-led research investigation looks at the problem that arises when important stories of a place are lost when a site has transformed over time. The true story of a site is represented by the hidden layers from previous time periods, which have often fragmented or faded over time. This thesis proposes that lost layers, fragmented stories and faded voices can be reawakened through speculative architectural representation.</p> <p>Fragments of stories can be used to stimulate the imagination. The allegorical interpretation of fragments can be used to generate dreamscapes. Within a dreamscape, the multiple voices of multiple fragments can be heard together, even when they represent stories from different times. When dreamscapes are captured as allegorical drawing fragments, these multiple voices can be heard and retained even when they have partially faded away.</p> <p>This thesis explores how an allegorical architectural project, framed within techniques found in allegorical narrative fiction, can be successfully used as a critical method to help reawaken and unveil lost voices of place and generate speculative architectural outcomes that allow these voices to be heard. This design-led research proposes to reawaken lost voices of place through mapping the field of imagination, collage and the creation of dreamscapes, and allegorical drawing fragments.</p> <p>Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams are examples of literary approaches to the allegorical interpretation of fragments. They are used in this investigation as literary provocateurs—allegorical generators to engage the imagination to reawaken lost voices as fragments and allow them to be heard in a collection—an archive of fragments. These two novels are effectively re-presenting place and time as dreamscapes. By enabling a series of fragmented stories to be heard as one, a richly polyvocal narrative is established that allows the reader to understand the significance of a place.</p> <p>Two neighbouring urban sites along the edge of Wellington Harbour have been selected for this investigation: the Taranaki Wharf Cut-out and the Kumutoto Stream Outlet. Both have unique tales to tell. The Kumutoto Stream Outlet is the site of the first culverted stream in Wellington. This entire stream has been silenced and has disappeared forever, yet it survives deep underground; this narrow outlet along the Wellington Harbour edge is the last vestigial remnant of its tale. The Taranaki Wharf Cut-out exposes the lost shoreline of Wellington before urban expansion. This shoreline has been silenced and has disappeared forever, and the cut-out provides the last visual connection to the lost landscape below. Fragments of the urban concrete have been removed from both these sites to reveal the lost remnants of the sites tales they once concealed. These sites are engaged as allegorical portals that invite a viewer below the surface of Wellington’s urban concrete to explore the lost layers of fragmented stories that lay hidden beneath. These sites are presented as ‘characters’ that narrate ‘stories’ of Wellington waterfront’s surrounding context and the transformation of the landscape over time.</p> <p>The original heritage conditions of a place often cannot be physically returned to their sites without disrupting the contemporary urban context. In this investigation, sites are not engaged as grounds for architectural intervention. Instead, they are provocateurs for how an allegorical architectural project can dig below the urban concrete and reawaken and unveil lost voices of a place. These voices are presented as a speculative archive of fragmented artefacts that invite viewers to witness, through these allegorical artefacts, an urban environment’s rich litany of heritage stories that may have been permanently lost or displaced. These artefacts take the form of maps, collages and drawings, and they are designed to read both as individual artefacts and together as a collection within an archive, this bound codex of work—an Archive of Fragments of Time.</p> <p>This thesis asks:How can an allegorical architectural project be successfully used as a critical method to reawaken and unveil lost voices of a place, and generate speculative architectural outcomes that allow these voices to be heard?</p>

Reactivating Dynamic Architecture: A Strategy to Inject Relevant Bodily Imagery Back into Architecture

<p>The building-body analogy, which used to be crucial in the designing of buildings, to the exception of a few, is fading. This broken link leaves us with a melancholic yearning; a sense of loss. Reactivating Dynamic Architecture readdresses the use of the body in architecture by the application of an intervening design process. The processes we undertake in order to design architecture are too often assumed, and go unchallenged. In this thesis the design process is seen as a protagonist for change. Representation, both architectural and artistic, is a central theme as the thesis guides images of the human body through abstraction. Both the dynamic body and fragmented body are investigated for their potential to create a relevant expression for the human condition. Dalibor Vesely’s theory of the positive fragment is identified as a way forward for bodily fragmentation, and Analytical Cubism, which resonated with this theory, is explored. The thesis initially moves through the investigation of historical interpretations of the body before drawing on contemporary theory. Past depictions of the fragmented and dynamic body are assessed in order to establish what they can offer us for future analysis. A representational mode is established, based on Cubism’s methods, from here the transition from drawings to architecture begins. Rowe and Slutzky’s text Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal is used to unravel the intricacies of Le Corbusier’s Villa at Garches, and their reading of this building is used to channel a successful conversion process. The resulting architecture was created as a trial of the strategy and is posed as an expression, or speculation, for what can be achieved through this method. Three different scale interventions are explored within the chosen site of Ava Train Station, Wellington. Carlo Scarpa’s techniques guide the last transition to architecture, as his processes are recognised for their ability to fold meaning into design. The described design process gathers complexity as it gains momentum; there is much to negotiate through the realms of bodily perception, modern art and architectural representation. However, the architectural expression carries that density of meaning in a simple expression</p>