Stage 1 Objective

The objective of this first stage of Project 3 is to develop a theory of seeing. In the first project, students were asked to engage with circulation as a system for integrating two volumes: the tall room and the long room. In the second project, students used geometric primitives and grains of orientation as the criteria for first developing, and later negotiating, the positive and negative spaces of a shared residence.  The first stage of the final project challenges students to heighten their perception of space through consideration of an additional criteria: time. Film will be used to animate our interpretation of space -- we seek to  understanding the medium of film as a temporal structure which unfolds into sequences of light, sounds, texture, and movements which situate--with highest levels of precision--the eye.

We will train our eyes to analyze and extract the spatial-temporal devices which films employ as the basis for a theory of seeing; we will use this theory as the productive basis for a new, reconstructed architecture.

I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I’ve created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it. In this room there are twelve walls shot by me in various parts of the world. In bringing together shots off walls and details, I’ve managed to arrange them in an order which is pleasing and to construct with intervals, correctly, a film-phrase which is the room.

-Dziga Vertov, 1923

Process

1. Select a film from the following list:

Citizen Kane, Orson Welles

Metropolis, Fritz Lang

Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock

Mon Uncle, Jacques Tati

Playtime, Jacques Tati

The Belly of an Architect, Peter Greenway

Stalker, Andrei Tarkovskly

8 1/2, Federico Fellini

Blade Runner, Ridley Scott

2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick

Dogville, Lars von Trier

2. Watch the film, select three scenes which together total no more than 5:00 minutes of footage.

3. While watching the film excerpts as a group, students will diagram in plan or in section the relationship of the mechanical movements of the camera (or lack thereof) to elements in the scene on (18 x 8.5” x 11”). Students must invent for themselves a System of Visual Notation for spatially mapping the following categories:

camera

movement of the camera

cinematic techniques of the camera (zoom, pan, track, focus)

body or bodies (both animate and inanimate)

movement of body or bodies

mass

void

circulation elements (stairs, ramp, elevator, etc.)

apertures (doors, windows)

enclosure (walls, roofs, ceiling, glazing, skins, casings, crusts)

threshold (spatial and/or temporal devices for transitioning)

4. Returning to their desks with a practiced and developed System of Visual Notation, the students will diagram three scenes from their selected film assigned/selected film (3 x 18” x 24”). Each scene should be diagrammed as an independent spatial-temporal territory, without relationship to the other two scenes.

5. Scan each drawing. Create three Photoshop collages (using only fills, gradients, textures, masks, and adjustment layers) which construct a softscape as an overlay/underlay to the previously constructed film diagrams, which delineate the hardscapes of the film. Elements of a softscape my include:

light (direct vs. diffused, tone, value, gradient)

sounds (reverberation, silence, loudness)

textures (hard, soft, rough, smooth)

climate (hot, warm, cool, cold, wet, dry)

movements (wind, walking, running, driving)

Deliverables: 3 x 18” x 24” collages

Due: Wednesday, July 2 @ 2pm

Schedule

Tuesday, June 10 - Plan

1:00 – 2:30: Exercise Launch - Brief is introduced. Students pick one Laslo Maholy-Nagy image and are assigned one word.

2:30 – 5:00: Students will be asked to do three different superimpositions of drawing onto plan.

5:00 – 6:00: Students will pick one superimposition which best reflects the word given to them together with instructor.

* Students will be asked to write a brief paragraph for Wednesday, elaborating the desired experience within the space. Aspect to take into account can relate to lighting, sound, textures, movements, views, mood, time, sensory experience, and more.

Wednesday, June 11 - Section

1:00 – 4:00: Students will be asked to devise three optional sections based on the chosen plan from the previous day.

4:00 – 5:00: Students, together with instructor, will pick one section which best reflects the concepts developed from the word and the paragraph they composed the previous evening.

5:00 – 6:00: Students will be given the requirements for final review: plan, section and model.

Thursday, June 12 - Model

1:00 – 6:00: go over deliverables with each student, with focus on model building.

Friday, June 13 - Review

9:00 – 5:00: Final Review, two studios together + guest critics

Stage 2 Objective

In Project 3, Stage 1, students developed a kino-eye by analyzing segments of film and building for themselves a System of Visual Notation. The System materialized -- with increasing levels of precision -- onto the architectural territory of the page as three discrete Tools of Seeing. These constituent elements combine to create a Theory of Seeing, a totality whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We will expand our Theory of Seeing by absorbing Site. We will bring into our Theory of Seeing photographic images of the site and its context, attempting to capture with our lenses (both figurative and literal) the complex systemic functioning of our parcel within Union Square. Through perspectival and planimetric analysis, we will begin to converge Theory with Site by integrating the following parameters into our Tools:

Access: pedestrian paths, bike paths, vehicular paths

Program: commercial, residential, industrial, institutional, green space

Environment: radiation (sun), convection (wind), precipitation (water)

Visual: icon, monument, gaze, perspective

Looking to the existing analytical sets of their Theory for direction, the student will photograph these systems using the following techniques:

Single-Frame: portrait or landscape, perspective or orthographic

Montage: multiple images rotated and positioned to create one large image

Track: a linear montage, frames with specific rates or velocity/acceleration.

Panorama: stationary camera rotating about a point

Orbit: a camera rotating around a single point/object in circular motion

Zoom: iterative adjustment of lens length

Jump-Cut: montage of highly differentiated images, fragmented

Process

Part 1: Create (Re)Perceptions

1. Print 3 Tools of Seeing and 3 site plans on 8.5” x 11” paper, for a total of six loose sheets.

2. Go to site with the following items: the four printed pages from Step 1, a camera, a hard flat surface to draw on, a notebook, a lead holder with 2B lead or softer, and a sharpener.

3. Using the camera techniques of single-frame, montage, track, panorama, orbit, zoom, and jump-cut, perform three perspectival site analyses. Each analysis should be employ one Tool  to investigate one of the following site parameters: Access, Program, Environment, Visual.

4. Precisely inscribe onto the site plan the viewing cone(s) of the camera for every exposure. That is, if you perform a montage analysis which consists of 8 sequential exposures, inscribe 8 viewing cones onto the site plan

5. Precisely inscribe and/or trace on the site plan the elements of the city which the camera has captured.

6. In Photoshop, create a new 18” x 24” document at a resolution of 300 PPI for each of your perspectives. Use these new documents as the canvas for assembling your perspectives. Use only the following PS tools:

Transform (Ctrl+T)(Move, Rotate, maybe Scale)

Opacity Level (0%-100%)

Blending Mode (Normal, Multiply, Overlay, Color Dodge, etc.)

*Note: The assembled perspectives will be referred to henceforth referred to as (Re)Perceptions.

Part 2: Create (Re)Perceptions

7. Re-open your three Tools of Seeing PS files. and revisit the logic of your System of Visual Notation. For each composition, create a key- using only symbols and text--to clarify how you represented the following elements:

camera / movement of the camera

cinematic techniques of the camera (zoom, pan, track, focus)

body or bodies / movement of body or bodies

mass / void

circulation elements (stairs, ramp, elevator, etc.)

apertures (doors, windows)

enclosure (walls, roofs, ceiling, glazing, skins, casings, crusts)

threshold (spatial and/or temporal devices for transitioning)

8. Note on each key whether or not the composition is planimetric, sectional, or a combination.

9. If time was used as a metric in your composition, note in which direction (i.e. from left to right, in a circle, along an arc, etc.).

10. Having clarified and distilled the System of Visual Notation for each Tool through the creation of keys, and  having precisely inscribed onto site plans the elements of the city which were analyzed in your (Re)Perceptions, begin copying and transforming elements from the Tools PS file into their corresponding (Re)Perceptions PS file.

*Note: These hybrid compositions will be referred to henceforth referred to as (Re)Constructions.

10. There are no restrictions on the PS techniques for the making of your (Re)Construction.

11.  Be sure to Save As so that you create a separate file and do not overwrite your original (Re)Perception file.

Deliverables: 3 (Re)Constructions

Due: Thursday, July 3 at Midnight.

Stage 3 Objective

Stage 3, the final stage of the final project, requires students to generate an architecture  which embodies the concepts and critical eye developed through their Theory of Seeing. Students’ theories have been developed into robust sets of interrelated ideas about cinematic space, which must now undergo a final stage which tests their validity for producing architectural space.

These new, inquisitive architectural  spaces must integrate the inspiration and knowledge which has aggregated through the course of the project: our Systems of Visual Notation now become the basis for a language of architectural devices (Aperture, Enclosure, Circulation, Enclosure) Our Tools of Seeing provide instruction on how to distribute and pattern these devices, while our (Re)Perceptions underscore an approach towards softscapes (light, sound, texture, movement).

The (Re)Constructions -- where Site was analyzed through perspectival montaging and collaging -- are our conceptual maps for approaching systems of Access, Program, Environment, and Vision.

Site: Union Square

We will engage the challenges of a highly energized local urban site with programmatic constraints, proximity to mass public transit and site parameters that will initiate an invention of architecture and place ranging in scale from a pedestrian public ground condition to an iconic cultural artifact – The Institution.

The particular site and program for this project are intended to introduce you to an interdisciplinary design process and dialogue that is becoming more and more imperative as architects address the complex needs and operations of the 21st century city. Issues of landscape urbanism are undeniably intertwined within the practice and discourse of architecture today.  

Along with a more interdisciplinary approach to design, you will be asked to consider the complexity and flexibility that is demanded by current culture and the effects, reality, and dynamics of public and programmatic appropriation and intervention. The City today is as much about interpretation and innovation of use as it is about defined program and the perceived rigor of a public institution.

Our final project challenges you to embrace this dichotomy through an architecture that both defines program and identity, while allowing for and motivating multiple interpretations and readings of place and operation.

Our site is located at Union Square in Somerville, an extremely visible and heavily trafficked area situated at one of the liveliest pedestrian and vehicular intersections of this city. While currently wrapped with retail, residential and commercial spaces, the site anticipates a major revitalization over the next 5-10 years that will create over 4300 new jobs and 850 new housing units. To service this future population surge, the city is planning to extend a green line T stop just one block from the site.

The parcel we are proposing to build on is flanked by Somerville Ave on the south and Washington St. on the north. Your project will be situated on a corner along one of the most well traveled routes from Cambridge and Somerville to I-93. Therefore, your proposals will need to operate at both the scale of the pedestrian as well as the scale (and speed)  of the vehicle and this new cityscape.

Students will be challenged to re-think and re-imagine the interface between architecture and urban infrastructure to create a new cultural hub for this area of the city. For this project we are proposing an overlap of marketplace, public outdoor space and a cultural center for the design of a new Film Archive and Outdoor Summer Theater for Somerville.

Program: Negotiating Fixed with Flux

Students are asked to consider this project as both urban landscape and institution. The proposals will need to combine adaptable space with fixed program and construction. The ambition is to speculate through the lens of an architect and urbanist, as well as a landscape architect in order to provide a more flexible and interpretive proposal for this new institution – while developing a new cultural identity for this revitalized area of the city.

Specifically, we would like you to consider and elaborate on one particular and very successful programmatic and urban intervention which previously existed on the edge of Boston’s Chinatown district: A temporary Outdoor Theater and film festival known as “Films at the Gate.” Previously this event took place annually for just one week during the month of August; however for the purposes of this proposal you will imagine extending the concept of an outdoor cinema and festival for the full summer season on the Union Square site. The subject of the Film selections (if any) will be left up to the student.

The challenge will be to both design a seasonal Outdoor Theater and Market place that co-exists with a collaborative, more permanent program to the site - a new Film Archive.

The programmatic intent is to expose Independent Film as more personal and part of the urban fabric – to promote local film makers as well as national and international film - through the exercise of a temporary and permanent architecture.

Traditionally the medium of Film has had the power to bring together people of diverse cultures, ages, socio-economic backgrounds, interests, etc. For this reason, Cinema is one of the more inclusive and public programs a city can offer. It has the potential to produce Event, a public experience, a memory – the possibility to recreate one’s awareness and identity with an entire urban district.

The objective of hybridizing a temporal (outdoor theater/seating/market) and permanent program (a Film Archive) is aimed at proposing a social value on the overlap of institution and open use. Markus Miessen and Kenny Cupers would refer to this condition as the intersection of the consumer and the non-consumer. However, in order for the non-consumer to understand the site as accessible and interpretable, adaptability must be explicit.

This initiative toward site appropriation is further referred to by Miessen and Cupers as the micro-politics of public space. They bring to light in “Spaces of Uncertainty” the value in the realities of taking over place outside of a more definitive architecture and planning. The text continues to describe the residual spaces adjacent to and alongside the more structured and designed places of everyday urban life as spaces that allow for those traditionally “excluded from contemporary public space” to engage with those that are considered more a part of the consumer culture. This specific site in Somerville has the potential for this heavily charged intersection of users.

Project #3 challenges the student to design a site and architecture that allows for both the film advocate and the general public to intersect – for definitive and improvised space to co-exist.

Program Requirements

Outdoor Theater:

- Outdoor Screen

size to be determined by student

- Seating

accommodate up to 200

- Projection Booth

app. 200 SF

Public Market Area:

- Outdoor public market area

Size to be determined by critic and student (can be semi-enclosed)

Film Archive:

Primary Public Spaces:

-Public Lobby

1000 - 1500 SF

-Indoor Theater (seating up to 500 people)

7000  SF

-Café/Lounge (can be indoor and/or outdoor space)

1500 - 3000 SF

-Film Bookshop and library (books, rare films, collections, etc)

2000 – 4000 SF

-Gallery / Exhibition Space(s)

2000 – 5000 SF

-Digital Filmmaking Workshops / Seminar/Lecture/Conf. Rooms (4) rooms 2200 SF (app. 550 sf each)

Administrative Spaces: -Film Vault (location for immediate film storage)

2000 SF

-Conservation Department/Conservation Lab

800 SF

-Administrative Offices (5-6 in total)

600 SF total

Film Archive Total Sf = app.  26,500 SF