SMALL WORLD
The architecture which speaks in the cinematic language
Ashkan Rezaee
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REMOTE NESTING: SMALL WORLD 8th semester/spring 18
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Spring 18 [Master](2) a project about eesence of film scene.
SMALL WORLD
The architecture which speaks in the cinematic language
Abstract We understand sets/objects/ people by their relationship to each other and ourselves. We would touch,observe,breath, smell, talk,etc to make things familiar, to know how we are connected to them: We call a place with oven and sink, a Kitchen by the use of it and people whom we care about and hang out with, Friends by the human emotional connection.“As we read a poem, we internalize it, and we become the poem.” (Pallasma,2007). The very close example of creating a space is in films, When the director carefully tries to mange to keep the flow of the storyline straight and sensible by going through screenplay, characters, locations, acts and so on. “We will call the description of a closed system like frames and small world0, a relatively closed system which includes everything which is present in the image - sets, characters and props - framing”(Deleuze,2000). More on that, When you watch a film, you would see everything is fused together and If it is a
good flick, you will be a part of it too. “If it is a great book, it has become part of my soul and my body”(Pallasma,2007). The frame therefore forms a set which has a great number of parts, that is of elements, which themselves form sub-sets. It can be broken down. The filmic subsets for architects, using cinematic language for creating space, not only be made out of conventional architectural material, but also characters and props are now part of the ingredient of making spaces.
0/ The idea of small world comes from ‘Kleinberg model‘ on ‘Small-World Network’1 theory, where a world is defined by the number of connections and number of steps to access another member of this network. Networks of this type are peculiar in that relatively short paths exist between any two nodes.
Cinema and Architecture Films have had a souvenir from nineteenth century for modernism, a shop providing sets of intriguing and diverse tool and techniques amongst the theories which have been born with them. Of all the art, Architecture has had the most privileged, difficult and sometimes vague relationship to films, since both share lots of the same variables and attributes and both are the “Role model for spatial experimentation”(Vidler,1993)1.
1/ Explosion of space,Anthony Vidler, 1993
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Cinema was invented and it has changed with history, technology and movements, moreover it has been getting bigger toe-to-toe with human imagination.”Cinema is, however, even closer to architecture than music, not solely because of its temporal and spatial structure, but fundamentally because both architecture and cinema articulate lived space”. (Pallasma,2000)
I+1.2/ Stockhausen’s a sheet of music, using alternative notation and rame work to write a music.
I+1.2/ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a soulful movie, it’s a movie about a lot of personal things that we all can understand and relate to. The important thing I took away from it is that Eternal Sunshine is a movie about love — and it’s a movie that does it right.
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Despite the fact that I have been influenced by avant-grad architectural works at the time from Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts and Parc La Villette to Koolhaas’ Delirious New York, I want to circumscribe this text to the fusion of objects appearing in the medium of framing in order to tell a specific story, hens, the way that architecture has a inevitable effect to create a space in time for circumstances. Before Cinema, Music had been the closest art form to architecture. “In its inherent abstractness, music has historically been regarded as the art form closest to architecture” (Pallasma,2000). Karlheinz Stockhausen a German musician who has the reputation of “one of the great visionaries of 20thcentury music” (Hewett, 2007) from critics, tried to create a musical space throughout a mixture of musical conventional and invented notations, or Iannis Xenakis4 with the impressive background on mathematics and music, together with Le corbusier designed and built the ‘Philips Pavilion’ on 1958, a project which was based on musical mathematics for creating immersive atmosphere in architecture.
Film directors create pure poetic architecture, which arises directly from our shared mental pictures and common senses of dwelling and interaction. Directors such as Lars Von Trier and Federico Fellini have created a moving architecture of memory, longing and melancholy, one that assure us so called filmic architecture is also capable of addressing our expectations from quality and experience of space. As an architect, my angle towards cinema is more like a director, A director creates a world for characters to fall in love, to grieve, to struggle with crisis in life or to enjoy the simplicity of life. However, all the experiences are beyond the life itself cause directors know they have limited time to sketch a life, time would not be taken for granted by them, therefore, I see my architecture as an one-shot5 and everything has to be in the right place. I would take Baudrillard tra jectory towards simulation in reverse, not to represent anything, but to mount the present by representation. Framing/The Crystals of time The Cinema does not just present images, it surrounds them with a world. These re-collation images contain spatial and visual information regarding to the base story to mold a story’s world. The elements are the data which are sometimes very numerous, sometimes of limited number.
4/ “Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances.
I+1.3/ Xenakkis Sketches for ‘Phillip Pavilion”
5/ “one-shot or continuous shot feature film” is a full-length movie filmed in one long take by a single camera, or manufactured to give the impression it was.
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I+1.4/ Wes Anderson 2012;”Moonrise Kingdom”, where Sam and Suzy found their freedom and togetherness by dancing to a music while imitating the people who would enjoy a holiday at the beach. Everything is natural but yet intriguing. best stories surprise you with familiar elements and act in peculiar circumstances.
To form this world all the probs and qualities are combined together in consecutive frames, however, what makes it interesting is the resonance between the actual image and virtual image of the same frame; A story is made of its ingredient: people,spaces,life and etc but at the same time you can write your own story with the very certain elements. As an architect, you are not only in charge of controlling materials, walls, technicalities, structure,etc, now you have more materials in your hands, being able to change the narratives, your wooden wall, photo-voltaic panels, bushy landscape, big windows are now corresponding to the story, imagining the context and defining the “silver crystal”(Deleuze,200) point between actual and virtual image.
Temple of thoughts/body We want to talk to fish/Big Fish2006, Tell the fake but epic story of our enjoy to a kid in the hospital to ease her pain/ The Fall2006, Imagine the world as a simulation of thought and numbers/Matrix2000, but we also use acts like ‘Talking’,’Telling a Story’,Imagine’,etc, acts that we are totally familiar with but we may be wondering how it would be done in each scenario.“..’We do not know even what a body can do’: in its sleep, in its drunkness, in its efforts and resistances...It is through the body that cinema forms its alliance with the spirit, with thoughts... (Deleuze,2000). Therefore, expanding the idea of programming from essential use to probable free acts might be a smart action towards making a space respecting the dynamism of events which might happen there. As architecture has been trying to find the best way to make certain ground rules regarding to programming, It has always been disputes over the role of programming architecture to actually form the architecture, from functionalism’s’ “form follows function’ to modernisms’ “form follows form”. “In any case, enough programs managed to function in buildings conceived for entirely different purpose to prove the simple point that there was no necessary casual relationship between function and subsequent form, or between a given building type and a given use(Tschumi,1981). With these mentioned, technically we may be able to assume a probable initial tendency of entering into architectural project, but the way of using, being and experiencing the space would be a mystery if we only cling to the architecture’s program ming justification. Tschumi mocked the conventional programming by saying ‘Last
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night I cooked in the bathroom and slept on the kitchen floor’.
constitutes a variable, continuous, temporal mould.
To imagine spatial qualities and experiments, we need to take all the story probes into the account, statics and dynamics, physical and none-physical, temporary and constant. Every frame base on individuals’ point of view,state, age, etc.. Is a two dimensional canvas with depth as a third dimension, A framework to trace,simulate,compose and design architecture or in a broader word life in architectural spaces.
“Architecture has always been as much about the event that takes place in a space as about the space itself”(Tschumi,1994), similar to film which wants to describe a life and a story. It draws consecutive events in order to create a strong scheme to be able to involve the audiences to carve a poignant memory of virtual small world into the deepest layers of their mind. Sometimes with extraordinary storyline, or unusual sets of objects and sometimes to create a vivid and strong presence using different kinds of cinematography techniques.
Considering shots as the scale of narratives The difference between the architectural framing and the photographic/render image follows from this. Photography/ Render is a kind of ‘moulding’: the mould organizes the internal forces of the thing in such a way that they reach a state of equilibrium at a certain instant as an immobile section. However, modulation does not stop when equilibrium is reached, and constantly modifies the mould,
I+1-5/ This shot films from a lower point and shoots up at a character or subject, making them appear larger so as to convey them as heroic, dominant or intimidating. It’s also anaother way of making cities look empty.
There is a one-to-one analogy between types of shots and architectural scale, not buildings scale but design scales. In each stage of design in urban programming, to master-plans, to neighborhoods, to buildings, to interior and finally detail design, you may consider different material,strategy and work-flow to work with, different worlds yet connected. On the other hand
I+1-5/ shot of Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) during the trunk scene in Inglourious Basterds (2009).
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Cinema has many types of shots to tell a story; The Aerial shot to film from the air and is often used to establish a location_usually picturesque _ , The Establishing shot to frame the head of the scene and establishes the location the action is set on, The Wide shot to frame the subject from the top of their head to their feet whilst capturing their environment and The Close Up to frame from above the shoulders and keeps only actor’s face in full frame. Employing cinematic literature amongst architectural principles create a dynamic work-flow to see the architecture inside-out and outside-in, to balance static and dynamic elements. The Moving Landscape
6/ The Zeitgeist is a concept from 18th to 19thcentury German philosophy, translated as “spirit of the age” or “spirit of the times”. It refers to an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history.
Regardless of site specifications for architects, the ones that lead them to design suitable for site trait and characteristics, there is bridge between the understanding of landscape of design and the landscape itself, the one that creates feeling in your heart and sharpen your imagination. “Tend to see our external physical landscape of life and our inner landscape of the mind as two distinct and separate categories “(Pallasmaa. 2000). We have to understand we do not live in the two separate world of physical and mental, however these projections are fused together into one singular reality, therefore, developing the sense of understanding the interaction of inner and outer landscape is absolutely necessary, this might be the only way to be in harmony with the landscape and environment flow. In the Zeitgeist6 of out time, theoretical and narrative explanations of buildings have often seemed more important that their actual design, It might be caused by abundance of material
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and technology available not only for architects but other people who tend to create “Beautiful” architecture, therefor, the way you breed ideas in a certain narrative gives the project personality and background . Albeit, maybe there has been always a gap between actual design and concepts that now it can be filled with the well-constructed storytelling by understanding actual and virtual landscape of the building and mind, the approach of framing outside from inner side and inside from the outer side. Story by an Architect There is an unknown ambiguity when we use terms ‘narrative’ and ‘architecture’. They are connected, somehow we are lost in many definitions of narrative of 20th century until now; from 50s and 60s manifestos to critical publications on 70s and 80s and emergence of paradigms from 90s till today. Today’s sense they suffer from slightly oppositional problems: the former proliferated and diluted, the latter restricted and reduced. In the media, reference to narrative is now so commonplace as to evade meaning. In its tightest form it indicates a literary sensibility, but often dissolves simply into an idea. In the communication age, narration invades the everyday: On your Instagram story or your twitter “what’s happening”. There is a question on how narrative applies to architecture. We shall see how narrative in space as opposed to literature or cinema has a firm basis in the way each of us learns to navigate and map the world around us. Within the framework of these personal spatial experiences, we would explore how narrative constructs can engage with the medium of space and frame. This will provide a framework for how architecture can be invested with narrative as a means to give it meaning based
on experience. “Storytelling is as old as the hills” (Coates, 2012). Even before the help of writing, myths were shaped by the oral tradition heart to heart and era to era. “From the Song-lines of the Australian Aboriginals to the proto-myths of the Greeks, mankind has searched for answers to the mysteries of the universe, painting them on walls and encapsulating them in stories”(Coates, 2012). Narratives has been creating this phenomenon of solidifying thoughts and forces of the nature into memories in order to travel through the time. Their overarching themes lie at the heart of the ma jor religions and cultures. Narratives that personify ethical or existential questions have profoundly shaped our understanding of space; these mythical tales and parables have the power to mediate between the spatial configuration of the world, of positive and negative, and the everyday world and its reality of being acknowledged, livelihood and territory. The Closing Scene Architecture has always had a mission to make spaces for people and it has evolved with people and people’s life. Architecture has tried to make a place for hopes,dreams,needs,ambition and events, the same things that cinema has attempted to lay out in from the first place.
References 1 Coates, Nigel,2012,’Narrative Architecture’,’Architectural Design:Primers, Wiley,pp.13-44. 2 Gilles, Deleuze,2000,’Cinema ,The Athlone Press ,London. 3 Medium. (2018). Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Analysis: Remembering Love. [online] Available at: https:// medium.com/@Scultpting_In_ Frames/eternal-sunshine-ofthe-spotless-mind-analysisremembering-love-9fdab3e43266 4 Pallasmaa, Juhani,2007,’ New Architectural Horizons’, ‘Architectural Design’,Vol 77, Wiley, No.2,pp.16-23. 5 Schott. (2017). Iannis Xenakis 95. [online] Available at: https:// en.schott-music.com/iannisxenakis-95/ 6 Tschumi, Bernard,1994,’ Crossprogramming:’, ‘Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color ‘, pp. 192-195. 7 Tschumi, Bernard,1981,’ Program:’, ‘Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color ‘, pp. 192-195. 8 Vidler, Anthony,1993,’ The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary’, Assemblage, No. 21, pp. 44-59.
Both architects and directors are in a full comprehension of elements of their framework, and both are super critical about the space/frame to be working with people and story/life. Too many similarities embedded in both professions and the tools and ideas can’t be exchanged unless we draw clear one-toone analogy between every architectural and every cinematic elements.
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EMERGENCE OF DISTRIBUTION GRID IT IS BASED ON THE MOVEMENTS OF DUNES, THE BEST TRACK TO NAVIGATE THE SITE
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UNITS’ DESIGN PROCESS EFFECT OF TOPOGRAPHY ON UNITS’ ROOF PINCH
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Small world / Core base 0
NORTH
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1 Entrance 2 Kitchen 3 Dining Room 4 Free Room 5 Rest Rooms 6 Storage 7 Court Yard
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5.00 communal
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bathroom
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