Translation

Exploration of Surface

This project takes the abstraction of pattern and creates an interesting condition between two surfaces. When viewed straight on, the surfaces line up to give the idea of the original pattern. Since this view is rarely achieved in perspective, this project will explore the idea of experiencing a layered surface from different viewpoints. The two surfaces create a space between which can be inhabited on different scales. This space is created through the folding and bending of each surface, which creates texture and space in the surface. “While bending may suggest tension, stress, or restlessness, it also suggests continuity, direction, and smoothness” (“(Un)folding Form” by Kostas Terzidis from “Expressive Form, A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design”). Through this manipulation, a dialogue is created between the surfaces, as a result of the original abstraction of pattern. This project explores the idea of a façade, which can be occupied. The viewer will have one perception from the outside, a different perception from the interior, and the space between the two surfaces. The Louis Vuitton Roppongi Hills Store explores the idea of transforming their label into a façade treatment. The label is experienced as label from the interior, but on other outer wall, it is transformed into an abstraction of that pattern which then allows you to experience the label in varying ways. “The composite of the layers forms a deep screen that provides varying degrees of transparency or opacity when seen from different angles: more transparent the more frontal the viewpoint, more opaque when seen on the oblique” (The Function of Ornament, edited by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo). The technique used in this building creates an experience that varies dependent on the viewpoint.
This project takes the idea of transformation of a pattern, and allows the surfaces to be experienced from the exterior, the interior, as well as the space between the two layers of surface. This will add an element of human motion that will make the façade more dynamic.

For the ant, a chain link fence becomes something of a pathway. It is a route that the ant will take to move upwards to uncharted territory. As the chain links wind in and out of one another, interchanges between the links are created allowing the ant to change from link to link. Eventually, the links connect to one long horizontal bar, the sort of interstate connecting the whole fence. The ant knows that he can not walk in the voids within the fence, they, in the eyes of the small creature, are solids. He can see flying insects make it through them, but knows he is not able. This in turn is an allegory to the city, where pedestrians and cars inhabit the streets and mysterious people are within solid buildings. These streets “cut” through the urban fabric just as the fence cuts up the ground below. Nevertheless “clusters” of shadows and trees are noticeable below. Different layers of roads “stack” to build a network of pathways, just as links layer each other to create a complete fence.
To create a city from the chain link fence, a scale change must be employed and everything must become larger. Shadows must become clouds, small weed patches will become forests, and the fence will become motorways. As the fence becomes larger, the round nature of the links will flatten out. Voids in the fence will need to be rendered as solids, to account for the places one can not necessarily be. These voids, when drawn in perspective should “diminish[ing] in size and recede[ing] to the horizon” (Frascari 17) but I would like to challenge that. I argue that when on the outskirts of the city, one can often see the buildings soaring into the sky farther away.
For a successful project, this will be more than just the modeling of a matrix of links, but also a diagram demonstrating “interruptions and inconsistencies” that create a sense of “time, void or chance encounters” so I can indeed cure my “dread of space” (Boyarsky 51). I believe I can do this by inherently changing the principles ordering the fence to create a more interesting and random form.

Frascari, Marco. From Models to Drawings. “Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural
Humanities.” Routledge: London.
Boyarsky, Nicholas and Murphy, Nicola. Action Research. “Architecture and Urbanism 1”.

Sketch

spiral