LIUmeng

• Project03 - Broadcasting House Trailer 

• Project02 - Macguffin - Make   

• Project 02 - Macguffin - 24 Prints

• Project 01 - Splice

The first reaction of the brief that it was very similar with my previous project - start from sketch. Would that be easy to make continuity? How would it (Broadcasting House) actually be (appearing/made/operating) initially from a series of set of information? The Journey to the ‘gap’ was then recorded, started from Royal Oak Station, through which the sense of volume was arise.

There were not very many thoughts during the first sketch, the sky (fake birds though), the viaduct, the bridge, the traffic… Everything is there as it should have been. There was just peaceful above all these concrete I noticed, time scale was regardless, rather empty. Would that be something coming to interfere this static phenomenon? Time? Weather? Event? Hazard? Communication (input/output), how much would it depend on these various changes? 

Thinking crazy, if london will be flooded in 50 years (canal is near by XD~), how would the habitat adjust by itself to fit the interference? What kind of thing/station/hub/structure/port could STAND TILL THE LAST? 

Reference: Squint/Opera - Flood London ‘Power Light Bulb’

The site is right there behind the wall, for which I tried to seek a close place to spot on. The front was blocked soon by fenced car park, I went back to station and crossed from north side to south, concrete to brick. The five storey building is still at the end of Porchester bridge, Hamiltons Architects (now BFLS), where I used to work for. I remembered there was a roof terrace where people could have very good aerial view to the ‘gap’. I soon received the information that company has currently rent out the top floor to the others including the terrace, the access is restricted. I walked along the south side wall looking for opening. The ‘gap’ is long and narrow, descending from East to West.    

Then there was pedestrian bridge at the middle of the ‘gap’, linking south and north, running behind the westway, the sight could be spotted though the fence of which. The level change as rather obvious at first impression, not only the building, the whole side of south part is lower. The westay, the platform under the westway, the tunnel beside the platform, the cross rail constructing field beside the tunnel and the railway track next to the field, there are tremendous level change among them, which created this the complex of the geological phenomenon image.

Refernce: Ali Rahim - ‘Catalytic Formations’

Looking to the west, the platform formed the base of the westway, the concrete viaduct is turning towards to south at the end, which formed a closure to the ‘gap’. There was no sign of any tunnel in the field, and the platform edge could be seen within distance.   

• High Way (Westway viaduct)
• Underground (tube)
• Railway link
• Crossrail (under construction)

What more could it bring by all means of transportation on the ground? What else would create more possibility to achieve its potential? Sailing? Flying? What kind of operations of a ’thing’ could optimise such ‘convenient’ site?

• A ‘Broadcasting city’?

Reference: Truman Show

• A ‘Broadcasting Ship’? XD~

Reference: OMA - CCTV Beijing

Reference: ‘Star Trek’ the Movie

• Or both…?

Reference: Ron Herron - Walking City

Outside the Westbound Park station there was this this only opening where could spot the boundary of the end of the ‘gap’, a guarded servicing path down to the constructing field beside the bus hub. The level here was raised again which is giving a basin view to the “gap”, that the volume and the communication, among all the spaces that have been accessing through, were questioned and experienced. 

Reference: Diller Scofidio ‘the bur’

[the mechanical film set of stanley kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey]

“I began to recognize the difference between imagery and physicality, that everything had both an imagery and a physicality, and furthermore that for me, the moment a painting took on any kind of image, the minute I could recognize it as having any relationship to nature, of any kind, to me that painting went flat… imagery for me constituted representation, ‘re-presentation,’ a second order of reality, whereas I was after a first order of presence… It could all be looked at essentially as turning the entire question upside down: moving away from the literate, conceptual rationale and really reestablishing the inquiry on the perceptual, tactile level… it’s about presence, phenomenal presence.”

[seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, by lawrence weschler. the words are spoken by artist robert irwin ]

• Presentation is too fragmented - you need to present more coherently - you need to define more clearly what the centre of your investigation is and articulating !
• Be careful about making generalisations about what people are thinking.
• Psychology of vision? - more research needed.
• Is the Ballard reference central to project or is it a device to talk about how you are work?
• There are interesting fragments but it is not clear what you are investigating precisely.
• Research + Understanding of how we experience space / how we digest it visually.
• Reference: Tom Dyckhoff ‘Secrete Life of Building’ (Channel 4)
• Development of strategic spatial relationships (in drawings/pictures) leading occupant traveling sequence of spaces - Tactical application of your research and experiment into how we view + occupy space - also the way cinema does this/ devices.
• Drawings that analyse the techniques + mechanicals of visual perception / or drawings that analyse film / or use annotations on film.
• Is it fist visual or can you bring in other senses - noise/touch of Westway?
• Reference: Visual Perception - Richard Gregory / Robert Irwin / Piranesi / Schemata and Depth etc…

My intension to observe and unfold the unseen history of the site and recycle, reuse the context to produce new stories, a new urban legend, and eventually influence the “future” occupant of the site and the site itself.

By mixing, overlapping, connecting, mapping, etc. the “6 splices” could produce 30 likly results or more. I am then becoming the narrator of the narrative, the cotroller of the event by utilising my visions.

It makes me to think sometimes when client say: “I don’t like the garden to be there”, maybe that is because he/she was looking at the opening window through the garden first. Then probably it is the problem of the opening, not the garden.

• Would it be possible to locate the sequence of the others’ vision by simply tracking their eye movement, we can therefore easily learn what they are truly looking at?

• Would it be possible to let the others learn what we are truly thinking through the same process, how much commons we can therefore conduct the occupants within the same space to tell the same story? 

Eye Movement Tracking Technique

There are lots of way to speculate an architecture…or a space in general term. By seeing, hearing or smelling etc, everyone has their own perception of course, however, there are still certain points where people are getting in common, not coincidentally but been intentionally designed so. The old Chinese did it for suzhou garden, the ancient Greek did it for Pathenon, the American did it for Manhattan…That is how we architects came about I guess.

[Huaxiu, Suzhou Garden/Viewing Routes in the Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty]

[Gyorgy Doczi/The power of limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art & Architecture]

[Barnard Tsuchumi/The Manhattan Transcripts, Part 4 ‘The Block’]

“Architecture is all about hierarchy.”

I can not recall who said this, maybe none, but it doesn’t make me not believe it. Hierarchy: ‘the arrangement of a particular set of (ranks or levels) i.e. multiple hierarchies are possible per (dimension or system).’ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy] Most of time we are seeing a space through vision initially. Scientific research indicates there is systematic logic behind when people look at an image unconsciously. By directing its sequence, we can therefore tell the spatial story. By controlling its sequence, we can tell certain spatial story. 

[Recordings of saccadic eye movements scanning Ilya Repin’s The unexpected visitor]

Ballard develops his language through/from his imagery/visual logic instead of rational logic… such reates the cinematic nature of the novel:

“To really appreciate architecture, you may need to commit an murder…A real architecture is about the action which it witness.”

Words by Bernard Tschumi

Therefore I see the site and its event as if it is a murder, or a myth case, and my objective is to find out the killer/ or the most convincing truth of the event. However, my approach is revealed through the “24 prints”. the prints are the presentation of the most believable clues that I speculated.

I am still not quite used to write an English blog everyday, or to say… never used to write any blog or diary in my life. All I had done was adding reference and reference that came from the others work, thinking these might help or that could be archived. After all, I gradually forgot what I made this blog to - unit inspector, apparently it could be hardly seen any solid piece of process through other people’s eye; myself, it did not really helpful for any sort of personal work improvement. Mostly, I am falling behind, I am keeping adding pages during the date that were supposed to be added much earlier, and I can never catch up. It is just truly wasting my time. Anyhow, I hope that from this entry, a week before the crit, I can sort everything out.

Fist of first, I am trying to link every scratches together. Apparently, the project direction has been alternated since the very beginning of the month. Now that is normal I know, pupil just got to find their way to start, got a new environment to fit in, got better ideas and thoughts changing everyday, in which none of the sketches or images could cop with, and I think that is also the part of reason I could hardly start my blog. However, I am not too far away I believe, and the best way pick them up is from the last tutorial sheet:

Here I try to make everything much simpler now, so thinking practically: 

• What do I need for the crit?

According to the last tutorial sheet and from what I speculated the unit work through this month, a bullet point list can be made below:

1. Research Process
2. Device Prototype
3. Project Ambition