ROOM. An Architecture of Perception, Not Predetermination (PORTFOLIO PRACTICE)

ROOM. AN ARCHITECTURE OF PERCEPTION, NOT PREDETERMINATION

Candidate: Mariano Cuofano - Tutor: Dr. Adam Kaasa MRes Architecture 2018/2019 - Royal College of Art

Reverb Pavilion

REVERB PAVILION FIRST SPATIAL SPECULATION

ROOM

ROOM

The Reverb Pavilion represents an abstraction based on the concept of the non-place (Auge, 1992). The generating idea was driven by questioning the meaning of the servant space or example, what is the identity of a corridor? A room to access another room designed to be passed through it and leave empty. The design assumption at the base of this speculation was to analyse what a corridor would become, by excluding the room connected to it, the arriving point to the path. In this speculation, the destination, the room to access it at the end of the corridor, is represented by the city itself.

The pavilion is immersed in the city and replicates the essence of the city under the form of its sound. As Masullo analyses, in Husserl’s phenomenology it is not fundamental to describe the proper geometry of the fact, at most, for Husserl, that act of knowledge is based on all those concepts related with that fact present in the inhabitant’s consciousness (Masullo, 2018).

For this reason, the pavilion is a place; being generated by all those peculiarities already existing in the city (Masullo, 2018).

This building, through its design peculiarities, represents a tool to connect the inhabitant with the sounds of the cities. Accessing that “raum”, the act of making space (Aureli, 2018), the perceiver should be able to listen to a multiplicity of sound phenomena and position themselves in the place as a consequence. The raum (Aureli, 2018) in this resonant architecture, is properly connected with the capability of the pavilion to collect distant noises and leave them to collapse them in the same environment. The pavilion works as an instrument to amplify the human perception, a building which aims to serve a human ability. This kind of function was investigated by Teyssot in the “Topology of Everyday Constellation” (2013). Furthermore, this architecture enters in the complexity of the already existing environment as a mirror, since it does not directly belong to the place. Its way of interacting with the surrounding environments is strictly related with the sounds themselves manifesting their peculiarities between the two walls, characterised in that specific place. This architecture puts the inhabitants in the condition of perceiving that system of signs even if immaterial, as sounds, that, once was read as a narrative, is defined a place (Auge, 1992). It is interesting to observe how a corridor, a passage, an architecture that in the beginning is meant to be a non-place, becomes the place-maker within the consciousness of the inhabitants. The operation is narrowing connected with the process of room making that Aranda describes putting the vibration, the perception of those vibrations, as fundamental in the identification of a room. (Aranda, 2019)

Perception and Inhibitions as medium of design What are the inhabitants perceptions in the pavilion, how does the perception changes in relation with the tectonic. Considering that both of the walls are way taller than an inhabitants. I start to question the differences in perception generated by the tectonic inhibition. What does it mean to be behind a wall, for example in the sector? Husserl argues about a perceptive imaginative process, something that I related with Meditaranenan dwelling systems.The design process started focusing on the relation between a wall, a vertical, flat and rigid, surfaces they at the same time can be perceived as limitations, according to Gibson’s affordance theory (1979). This limitation being made me interrogate, what is my relation with a limit?

How can I overcome this limit? Can this limit be overcame?

To emphasize this question, I wanted to create a condition where the inhabitant was detached by the surrounding contexts. Adding another parallel wall, wondering to recreate the corridor condition, mentioned before, the inhabitants were forced to be entered in parallels room. This was my design interpretation of that condition of being deeply connected, but not in direct contact, as mentioned before.

Where your perception complemented with imagination generated an immaterial landscape in the inhabitant consciousness. Afterward, the further action was to stretch and inclinate a wall to let the shadow progressively absorb the smaller wall, to give a visual reference to the Husserl geometry.

Reverb Pavilion - Creative Process

6:OO AM

1:00PM

Shadows Simulation - 51.5074° N, 0.1278° W London (UK) 10/09/2019

Shadows This speculation aims also to investigate the concept of immaterial room. The pavilion working as a sundial generated a room dynamically related with the surrounding environment, made mostly of intangible, ephemeral elements. My answers was to analyze the shadows as a dynamic space that belongs, in sense of qualities, to the pavilion but is not physically described between the two wall that compose it. Being in the shadows the inhabitants is able to feel several differences in the sense of temperature and brightness of light, but also being in a described in a new, dynamic perimeter. Is this an immaterial room?

4:00PM

7:00PM

2°

1.7 0.6

48.0

Rever Pavilio - Plan

0

1

2.5

5

10m

0

Rever Pavilion - View

Rever Pavilion - Prospective Section

1

2m

This provocative building is made of two inclined asymmetric walls with an intrados vibrant metallic surface, 50 metres long with a narrow separation between each other. The walls create a homogeneous, dark surface to generate an indefinite perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). This indefinite perception aims, referring again to an act of defamiliarization, to alter the perceptive impact of this installation in the context it will be located. The tallest wall is 4.5 metres high and the second is 3 metres. The rationale behind this is to make the smallest one disappear, according to the perspective under the projected shadow of the tallest one. The user will discover its existence only walking through the void until the end. This design operation is related with the Husserl phenomenology (Husserl, 1931). Disappearing under the perspective illusion of the other, the wall is graphically representing the concept of an element within the element itself, the fundamental aspect of the geometry of Husserl. The inclination of 2 degrees shapes the void between the two walls, at the end of the corridor, to generate a special condition where only one person is able to stand and then exit the building. In this condition the only person at the end of the corridor will be able to perceive all the noises, including sounds connected with the presence of other people, canalised toward them immediately before leaving.

The maximum sound condition is condensed in that narrow space. The sky is treated as the only common element with the exterior and is visible only by touching the smallest wall. Being in between, the metal foil that covers the surfaces of the building helps to reflect the sound and contribute to modulate the noises to create the echo-reverb condition. The design effort was to effort was to show all these concepts within a single operation. I did not want this building to be an agglomeration of elements aiming to show specific functions. Rather is was, stylistics interested in design an efficient, but as much elemental as possible, structures. The act of incliniate the wall, creates a clouser in prospective, creating a closed space, a room. At the same time forces the inhabitants in a funnel, where there is space for only one person, this makes the experience much more intimate and ti conclude the, as visually explain in the renden on the right, the inclination make the wall to disappear in the shadow, a bifurcation that collapsed in an immaterial element. Moreover the color emphasizes this concept and collaborated with the shadows to make the boundaries of this building to be blur, according with the dynamic changing of the shadows.

Rever Pavilion - Top View Render

Rever Pavilion - Front View Render

Rever Pavilion - Inside View Render

REVERB PAVILION - VIDEO AV ELABORATED FROM BACKGROUND NOISE OF LONDON NOICE

(CLICK ON THE HYPERLINK)

Rever Pavilion - Front View Render

Interaction Room As a spatial speculation the Interaction Room represents a format of feedbacking architecture. It is an installation which aims to offer an opportunity, a phenomenon, a sound, to show how it is possible to generate space and the relative position each one takes within, coherently with other individuals’ presence. The experience consisted in accessing a box, an elementary volume, black, dark. In this room, the participants were able to face other participants only as silhouettes, the obscure environment did not enable them to distinguish proper figures and images. Shadows are generated by a tiny light located on the edges of the room. The interior space is free, a square.

The overall experience is based on the production of sounds. The idea is to link the sounds produced by the movements of participants to a specific position in plan, so that it will be related to a specific sound frequency (a note). A first design interpretation (sketch on the left) was to leaven an empty space in the room. The technical solution was to put a perimetral antenna all around the room with a capacity range of 2m. Developed this idea, I noted that the possible interaction within a void space was not really efficient.

There were no possibilities to dialogue with the source of sound and create, and consequently to create a personal spacial-sound condition coherent with instantaneous feeling, again as in the pavilion the criteria of sound were predetermined. The introduction of the object allows this customization. The objects do not work as a musical instrument, the participant cannot really play them and manipulate them, rather they work using the special interaction with a medium, the interaction of a human body with the imaginary plan generated by the magnetic field that connects the three antennas.

INTERACTION ROOM SECOND SPATIAL SPECULATION

Sketch - Perimetral Antenna

The Object - Detailed Drawings Antenna 345

Design and peculiarities The reason for choosing three objects is related to an elemental geometry postulate: a minimum of three generic points in space generate a generic plan.

The idea was to make the installation for working on two layers; the first one where the participant had a spatial relation with the tectonic of the room itself and the second where the participant had a relation with an immaterial plan generated by the interaction of their own body with the magnetic field generated by the objects. Following this concept, the technology is implemented by two distinguished functional systems; the first digital, and the second analog.

A digital tracker, that works through an infra-red camera located on the ceiling, will distinguish the participants’ bodies and associate them with a virtual skeleton. Moreover, the room itself is divided in a grid, where each sector corresponds to a specific musical note. When the virtual skeleton enters one of those sectors, the software release a MIDI output that is read by a sequencer (Logic Pro X, Cubase) located in a remote platform and issued as a sound. The analog system is based on a technology inspired by the “Theremin”. It consists of an antenna which is able to feel the proximity of the electric voltage of the human body, and to translate it in an analog audio input which is pre-amplified by an integrated circuit and then issues the sound through an active speaker. The three objects interacting with each other generate a magnetic field which produces a white background noise. Bodies moving through this field, alternate this with the magnetic status and as a consequence, alter the white background noise and sound. As a result, this investigation can observe how an immaterial plan, produced by a series of invisible spatial interaction, could be alternated and manipulated, by the act of “dwelling” (in this case, the act of

1840

Wireless Jack

Antenna

Circuit

Powerbank

Axonometric Exploded View

Prospective top view - Possible layout solutions

The double role of the objects

Motion Tracker The Motion tracker is the second technology involved in the project. This system is based on a mapping action, it virtually create a grid of 400 sectors from a1 to t20, and a tracking one. The infrared camera located on the ceiling detects the position, a point, of the partecpatans within the cells and translate this into a MIDI output according by Python code developed an external collaborator, Mr Stefano Cirillo. Once it becomes MIDI this output is managed by a sequencer (Cubase,Logic Pro X, etc) where the actual sound and regulation is generated.

The objects belong to an immaterial space. Being a limit and simultaneously a tool to expand the perception, in the sense of proximity and sound generator, the objects represent a possible representation of a membrane. As a cell membrane that responds to external inputs and “negotiates� (Sennett, 2013) with those, the object is able to release information relative to the inhabitants’ actions. In the definition of porosity, Richard Sennett explains how a membrane, against an open door, is rather an archetype able to let only certain elements to move forward. Comparing the difference between a border, intended as a frontier, as a limit where human negotiations take place, and a boundary, a strong, rigid (a brittle) limitation (Sennett, 2013), this thesis assumed in the realization of this object the possibility to confer to an architectural item the power to increase the negotiation.

Motion Tracker System

Magnetic Field

0

1

2m

Motion Tracker system + Objects

The Event The interaction room become real on the 13tth of June 2019. With the support of Mr. Y. Cracas. The event took place at the at the Royal College of Art at the Lower Gulbenkian Gallery. The gallery was empty and darker, any furniture, any items in the room was removed to allow the participant to sit, or walk around the installation and listen to the sound produced in the room. The environment was enlightened by a spotlight pointed against a wall to reflect indirect lights, leaving the entire room in pen-umbra where people could relax and focus on the sound. The entrance on the interaction room was enlightened by another spot light to emphasize the contrast between the interior and the exterior of the installation. This light, also, accentuate all the curves and the texture of textile, that on that occasion, described the real boundaries of the room. Participants were joining in the installation by them self or small groups, a max of three. Before entering each participants was given instructions and information on the movement inside.

Experience Roles Entering the room, we invited, the perceiver to familiarize with the darkness and background noise, assuming that noise as a sort of architectural element of the room, touching the objects, perceive the distances among them. Our second instruction was to wait 60 seconds at the center of the room, in the triangle described by the objects. In this time the digital system recognize the body, or bodies, and start tracking movements. Once the system was ready, we communicate participant to freely start move and interact with the space.

Motion Tracker system - PC Screenshot (From the event 13/06/19 at RCA)

Outside view (PH Moritz Dittrich)

Outside view (PH Moritz Dittrich)

Outside view (PH Moritz Dittrich)

Interior view (PH Moritz Dittrich)

Controll Station (PH Moritz Dittrich)

Interior view (PH Moritz Dittrich)

INTERACTION ROOM ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART 13.06.19 INTERACTION ROOM ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART 13.06.19

PARTECIPANTS INTERVIEWS

SOUNDS INTERACTIONS

(CLICK ON THE HYPERLINK) (CLICK ON THE HYPERLINK)

Area totale interessata dalla diffusione del suono

INTERACTION ROOM Nex happening: Salerno (Italy) - 22.12.19

Pedestraian path to the curch To experiment the concept on a larger area, and in a familiar environment - the interaction room has proper lighting and peculiarities made for the performance - I started to map paths to access the building and strategically direct the sound on them.

1 0

“Interaction Room” - Context (Morticelli’s monumental church in yellow)

5 2

10 m

“Interaction Room” - Map of the accesses

Audio Surround System Audio surround system to diffuse sounds over the portion of the surrounding historical centre. The concept is to diffuse live sound among alleys to upscale the concept of feedbacking architecture. The diffusion of sounds increases the complexity onto already dense substrata, altering the inhabitants’ acknowledgement of space through the introduction of another layer of phenomena.

“Interaction Room” - Audio Surround System

“Interaction Room” - Plan

“Interaction Room” - Outside view (Morticelli’s monumental church)

“Interaction Room” - Outside View (Morticelli’s monumental church)

“Interaction Room” - Outside view (Morticelli’s monumental church)

“Interaction Room” - Control Station (Morticelli’s monumental church)

“Interaction Room” - Control Station (Morticelli’s monumental church)

“Interaction Room” - Outside View (Morticelli’s monumental church)

APPENDIX

Back and forth design

Design Approach; Grounded theroy and collaborative practice Back and forth design Role of experts in project development Role of participants in project development

In my investigation I applied several methodologies in order to overcome predetermination of architecture was to apply a methodology that could generate an architecture free of constraints and features connected with classic composition paradigms, deriving from modernism. Without questioning the qualities of composition roles, conventional architecture follows a specific path that could be described in four passages; Research, Design, Building and Use. The only occasion for inhabitants to investigate the architecture, and share feedback on its qualities, is after the construction. This process appears to be monodirectional, so irreversible, where the life efficiency of that design is only based on project interpretation of the architect. Moreover if we consider that architecture makers largely apply predetermined competitive roles deriving from modernism, is reasonable that at the end of that linear process the outcome it may result to be a place where just a certain life can be accommodated; an ideal life, generic, that the user is forced to live, or at least to fit in, without having a role in that process. To overcome the brittleness of this concept I decided to apply the grounded theory to develop my practice.

The grounded theory is methodology based on “back and forth� passages.

CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE SEQUENCE

Research

Design

Building

Life

Role of experts in project development

COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTURE SEQUENCE

Research

Design

Experts

Speculation

Proposal

Participants

Building

Life

Starting from a grounded theory application I identify the role of expert in two distinct way, across two distinct moments. To design certain experience requires specific knowledge over architecture competence. In the first moment role of expert is fundamental to find a way to find mediums to generate architecture.

For example in the Interaction Room, my second spatial experimentation, the collaboration with two experts; Yunes Cracas (Electronic Engineer) and Stefano Ciarello (Informatics), was essential to transform a room in an instantaneous feedback machines, that allows people to interact with space. My knowledge as an architect was joined to expert knowledge, to create an altered space that could be lived according with architecture behaviors, to walk, move the objects, rest, lay on the floor etc., but at the same time responded to their behavior according with uncommon medium for architecture. This collaboration allows me to create the speculation, and indeed, to investigate and collect data from participants in that context scenario. The second role of experts is once analyzed the outcome of the speculation, to translate the choice condition of life manifested in the test, in proper architecture making. An example can be the Ex Of In House by Steven Holl in Rhinebeck. Holl approached design starting from the formal interaction inspired by the Triple Venn Diagram Mutilation, trying to intersect the complex geometric forms of the Tesseract within a Cubic Sphere.

The first result was a hyper complex structure that represent the formal volume interaction, but was unable to accomodate life. Second operation was to translate elements deriving from that experiment in conventional architecture. This operation gives to the built architecture the strength deriving from his speculation, that it would not be possible if following traditional process of construction (Holl, 2016). Steven Holl’s process was not linear and his presentation was based on “back and forth passages”. My aim is to emulate this kind of process, but in relation to people’s behavior rather than like in Holl’s case, forms.

FROM TESSERACT TO EX OF IN Example of learing from a (formalist) specuilaition

Role of participants in project development Participants in the investigation process, such as experts and participants of the Interaction Room experience, played double role in the compilation process which included part of being in the experience and ethnography qualitative interviews. Participants involvement was fundamental to test the speculative design prepared to show certain spatial condition, and this was followed chronologically after the speculative project has been developed with the experts. Through their role in participating in the experience, they could possibly suggest a solution, maybe initially unseen or ignored, and confirm or undermine assumptions. In my practice this first involvement of participants had character of attending the experience of the event Interaction Room. In that passive moment, participants were free to experience the room without any constraints and pressure. After the experience there was interview part, where participants were asked questions about ability of manipulating space through the sound and shared their perceived and sensed experience and their feelings. What I intend to underline is that the participants did not have a stringent, direct, way of influencing design, because their suggestion could be derived from natural, daily based experiences and behaviours or their knowledge of architecture, rather their contribution enabled observation of their behaviours, gathering feedback on their feelings in that specific situation which shaped my further findings. To conclude, participants contribution supported in avoiding the irreversible process of architecture, that allows inhabitants to experience the building only in its final expression and especially, when it is already built, and overcoming the usual distance between the inhabitants and the building, as two separate entities.