Document Type
Thesis, Senior
Degree
B. ARCH
Date
Spring 2019
Keywords
projections, illusory images, mirage, architecture, digital display, media, infrastructure
Language
English
Disciplines
Architecture
Description/Abstract
This thesis explores experiences created from mixing architectural elements with projections, in order to make projections melt into architecture as an inseparable element. By proposing an architecture that integrates the effects and infrastructures of digital displays at the starting point of the design process, the project seeks to explore the ability of digital displays to blur physical boundaries, to apply temporality on eternal structures, and to isolate the exterior from the interior.
The project uses mirage, an optical phenomenon that produces illusory images of distant objects, as an analogy to speculate about digital displays in architecture. On the one hand, mirage shows an ordinary object in an alien setting, offering a distorted reality just as digital displays show images on architectural surfaces. On the other hand, the phenomenon requires concrete physicality to make it happen, just as digital displays require complicated infrastructures to work.
Thus, the project uses mirage as the starting point to consider what digital displays can offer to architecture. First, architectural mirage can impose, erase, blur, and extend existing boundaries, to distort and manipulate spatial conditions. Second, it can alter architecture from inaction to temporality, making architecture's function and program change over time. Furthermore, architectural mirage is capable of enhancing the interactivity of architectural surfaces, to isolate the exterior from the interior. If the interior and the exterior can be understood not simply as the consequence of an envelope or a passive result of building mass, the interior and the exterior can, in Sylvia Lavin's words, "assume enough identity of their own" and open up to new possibilities.
From these perspectives, the project proposes an architecture, a hybrid project that mixes digital displays with tectonics, to test and explore a wide range of sensual effects and intangible experiences that differ from traditional architectural space. The project aspires to provide an alternative to the masking process, to inspire and encourage people to think more about architecture plus media, instead of simply masking architecture with a huge screen.
Recommended Citation
Xu, Nuofan and Zhang, Ziyao, "Mirage: Architecture's Confounding Experiences" (2019). Architecture Senior Theses. 515.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_theses/515
Source
Local Input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Additional Information
Thesis Advisors:
Molly Hunker
Amber Bartosh