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Andreea Breazu
Professor Susan Holden
Kinaesthetic Movement and the Limits of Modern Architecture
7 January 2013

Architectural Video Mapping and the Promise of a New Media Faade


At one point, it seemed as though digital media would dematerialize architecture transforming it
into a technologically-pervasive organization of space. However, it is the cloud that stands
nowadays as metaphor for dematerialized architecture while digital media has come to be
considered a material. But as Blur Building by Diller + Scofidio exhibited at the Swiss National
Expo in 2002 proved, materialized digital media more often than not obscures the view and
despite the permeability of this space, transparency is forfeited and what started as an utopic
project soon turns into a dystopia of disorientation. The question, then, would be how to use
digital media in a perceptually-innovative way which could also instill a new vision in todays
architecture.
Architecture exhibitions or biennales reflect the changes in theoretical architectural concepts or
vision better and, to a certain extent, more accurately than approved construction projects and
building sites. This might be seen as a result of the age-long discrepancy between theory and
practice in architecture, a discrepancy that brought about the architects compromise of not being
able to apply theory literally, in part, because of the disadvantage of
never working directly with the object of their thought, always working at it
through some intervening medium, almost always the drawing, while painters and
sculptors, who might spend some time working on preliminary sketches and
maquettes, all ended up working on the thing itself. (Robin Evans qtd. in Vidler
7)
Computer-aided design introduced 3D simulations and made possible prototypes that exceed in
complexity the present technological and building limitations. Instead of focusing on the type of
compromises being made in the transition from virtual representation to actual construction, it is
more productive to note the new potential inherent in this situation: building-incorporated CAD
simulations in the form of architectural video mapping, integrated as a media faade. Although
video mapping is a projection technology, thus it is external to the object onto which it appears,
it has a profound relevance for architecture due to its site-specificity. Video mapping is a
projection technique, it uses a software that can map out a 2D or 3D object in a virtual
simulation. Mapping is a form of tracking each comprising element, rendering a virtual copy of it
and finally combining them into a virtual replica of the physical object, in this case a building.
Furthermore, this allows the video artist to manipulate the core elements by adding shadows,
extra dimensions, optical patterns and illusions, and most importantly by animating, by instilling
movement onto the projection surface.
Consider movement in architecture although it might be one of the features desired in the
design it is almost always lost by the final stages of the project. No matter how extraordinary the
result might be, as in the case of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao designed by Frank Gehry,

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there is a significant loss in movement, flexibility, and even in regard to the privileged
viewpoint. Michael Webbs counterargument to this practice brings the point home:
[W]hereas Archigram tried to make what is essentially an inert object, a
building, into something fluid, the formal evolution of a contemporary building
such as the Guggenheim at Bilbao is the result of the fluid process arrested to
create an inert object. (qtd. in McQuire, Martin, and Niederer 53)
In the chapter Mobility, Cosmopolitanism and Public Space in the Media City of Urban
Screen, Scott McQuire reviews the efforts of Michael Webb, one of the founders of Archigram,
along Yona Friedman, Constant, or Nicholas Negropontes Machine Architecture to design
flexible cities which could accommodate speed and mobility by empowering the user. It was in
the 1960s when user-generated content became a prerequisite of avant-garde architecture but the
potentially democratic tool of CAD systems re-instated the architect in the control position. In
other words, technological development bypassed the need for collaboration, be it in the sense of
user involvement or in that of original computer-generated content (in the case of evolutionary,
co-learning computers). Architecture offers progressively a less privileged access to its imagistic
by attributing high degrees of control in the first stages of design and close to nothing in the
completed phase. Furthermore, with the loss of tactility and the scale and details crafted for the
human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, and
unreal (Holl, Pallasmaa, and Perez-Gomez 29); this is another consequence of the close
relationship the architects designs have with the industrial requirements and specifications. The
ideal match is between the CAD simulation and the industrial production, and not between
prototype and user/community.
Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva revisit the shortfall of architects to grasp buildings (or rather to
make them visible) as as movement, as flight, as a series of transformations (80). In their
2008-essay Give Me A Gun And I Will Make All Buildings Move: An ANTs View of
Architecture, the authors denounce Euclidian space and Renaissance perspective in favor of a
new theory, one that is
able to transform the static view of a building into one among many successive
freeze-frames that could at last document the continuous flow that a building
always is (81).
One could say that monumentality is the main obstacle in rendering visible this flow; a
monumental display of matter obscures the breaths of buildings, otherwise understood as
complex aggregates of countless variables. The human-centered approach is to be discarded
because
matter is much too multidimensional, much too active, complex, surprising, and
counter-intuitive to be simply what is represented in the ghost-like rendering of
CAD screen shots (86).
However, architectural video mapping is a step in the right direction despite the fact that it uses
virtual simulations similar to CAD systems. The advantage is that it adds a new dimension to the
building onto which (or rather for which) the projection is projected, a virtual dimension in
which the matter is malleable, mobile, easily displaced and replaced; all these effects contribute
to more than just a visual play, they engender in the viewers mind a full architectural vision

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while the building itself is revealed to be an instance in a wave of possible instances. As Latour
and Yaneva phrase it, buildings should be imagined as a navigation through a controversial
datascape (87). But this datascape does not refer to flowing charts and statistics of the numbers
of inhabitants and visitors or of the air pressure and temperature inside, not even of the energy
input and output; the datascape reflects different intensities of engagement. Architecture has
always been invested with roles that served the community; as shelter, as temple or as
monument, its purpose has never been doubted since the interaction was guaranteed. In the
secular age, the symbolic meanings have been dislocated and re-conventionalized, and in
particular in the age of media faades, architecture is more and more perceived as a tool of
advertisers and corporations: monumental walls turn into LED screens and awe-inspiring space
dissolves into mundane places. The use of technology has been subverted and turned away from
communitarian values.
It is interesting to note that as early as 1943, Sigfried Giedion, Fernand Lger and Jos Luis Sert,
while having identified the need of monumental architecture to be something more than
functional (29), had suggested the projection of light, color and form on vast surfaces of
landmark buildings. They foresaw the use for advertising and propaganda purposes but did not
consider this to be detrimental to the community. Urban screens have been around for almost 40
years but they have been studied only in the past decade when they came to be considered an
issue of urban space and public culture. Architectural video mapping, on the other hand, is much
more recent and its main use is indeed for advertising purposes and benign propaganda. As it is
often the case, architectural video mapping are publicity stunts meant to celebrate the history of a
monumental building, recognized as a landmark. Such events, to be called architectural
projections1, usually imply a narrative and turn the building into a giant canvas, thus gravely
departing from the characteristics of a media faade. The connection to architectural mapping is
maintained only with the intent to mark the historically relevant events such as a fire and a
reconstruction, a battle or a siege, a new addition and so on. The episodes in-between these
moments depict monsters or fantastical creatures, but also characters such as kings and queens
which might have been involved in the history of the edifice. Accompanied by suspenseful
music, the architectural projection is a mere spectacle of considerable proportions and has no
relevance for visual culture or for architectural imaging.
What is of interest here is not how this video software is currently used but how it might be used
given the technological possibilities, the theoretical context and some of the partly successful
experiments that have already been done. An example of this is the A-cero XV Aniversario
designed by Onionlab for the 15th anniversary of architecture studio A-cero. It is this type of
architectural video mapping that shuffles between different architectural interpretations and
renderings of the same building blocks in order to offer insight into a creative process,
characterized by plurality and indeterminacy, and re-mixing it in a video simulation. The
projection reviews the studios activity, its design trends and best prototypes, and culminates
with a prospective architecture vision of light, dynamic surfaces, liquids and domotics 2.

Examples: Fuegos del Apstol (VJSpain, 2011), Telenoika Audiovisual Mapping (Telenoika, 2011),
ENGHIEN (AntiVJ, 2009), Spatium (Refik Anadol workshop, 2011), or NML (The Macula, 2011).
2
Official video description available on: http://vimeo.com/26381610#.

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Another point made by Sert, Lger and Giedion in Nine Points on Monumentality is that a
monument should convey the integration of the work of the planner, architect, painter, sculptor,
and landscapist demands close collaboration between all of them (idem). Architectural video
mapping can achieve this level of integration because it combines different forms of visual
expertise and remediates painterly, sculptural, animation, sound devices and virtual simulations
into a mixed-reality (or augmented virtuality).
Christopher Andrew Brisbin has a different approach to this integration of arts into architecture;
his endeavor is to open up architectural theory and design to unexploited opportunities. He
expands on the topic of space-image relation, analyzing conceptual and technical frameworks
from architecture and comparing them to image-technologies developed in Visual Culture and
the History of Art (6). Brisbins appeal to other visual fields is justified by the context in which
the tangible perception of an object from its pictorial representation has never before been so
open to radical transfiguration by contemporary image-technologies. (idem) Thus, the spaceimage relation is fabricated, manipulated and distorted with the help of technological
advancements which often times surpass our conceptual understanding. Retracing the dynamic of
space-image in visual history, the author tries to pinpoint alternatives to the historical
development of architecture and suggests possible modern-day implementations. In the midst of
this discussion about screens and screens-within-screens viewed through different lenses and
mediated by different technologies, all based on perspective, the cacophony of the visual
becomes evident.
In order to escape the tight grip of perspective, architectural video mapping needs to extend
beyond one-sided projections and to envelop in the mixed-reality the entire building. Total video
mapping could break the urban-screen visualization, advancing into the territory of multiple
viewpoints, superimposing back and front in a new logic of space. As mentioned in the
beginning, the gap between architectural theory and practice has movement as its classic
example: there is a great philosophical sophistication behind this concept, it has a historical
development, being redefined according to various trends and agendas3. Flexibility, modularity,
evolutionary growth and so forth designate a sense of movement assigned to the architect, to the
user or to the building itself. Architectural movement, in one way or another, has been
considered in the past century an achievable feature although it remains highly abstract. From the
point of view of the user, there is an inherent suggestion of action in images of architecture, the
moment of active encounter or a promise of use and purpose (Holl, Pallasmaa, and PerezGomez 35). Moreover, a bodily reaction is an inseparable aspect of the experience of
architecture (idem), in other words the action of the building triggers a reaction in the human
body, and in order to encounter an architectural work ones senses must be fully engaged.
For simulation purposes, architectural video mapping can provide movement and interaction in
the form of performativity which produces new subjects of knowledge, hyphenated identities,
transgendered bodies and digital avatars and reveals the architectural subject to be fragmented
rather than unified, decentralized rather than centered, virtual as well as actual (Kolarevic and

Generations of architects and engineers have dreamt about buildings and structures that can literally perform in
order to adapt quickly to varying needs or circumstances by changing the physical shape, spatial and functional
configuration, levels of natural and artificial light, overall aesthetic appearance, etc. (Kolarevic and Malkawi 151)

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Malkawi 179). But performativity4 in this case is greatly endowed to the sound effects that DJs
compose for each video mapping work. It is the soundscape that gives materiality to the video
projection, that adds realness to the augmented virtuality; it represents the anchor to the shared
physical reality of the audience, first because the architect works in code, code that is readily
understood by others in the trade, but is as potentially hermetic to the outsider as a musical score
or a mathematical formula (Vidler 7), and second because they must satisfy the collective
force the people, as Gideon calls it (29), and translate their hopes and thoughts. Plus, the
structure of aural phenomena should not be underestimated in its affinity to architectural design
(Holl, Pallasmaa, and Perez-Gomez 91).
In view of these theories and accounts, architectural video mapping could provide a learning
tool, a discovering tool for artists and designers who re-map and re-envision monumental works
of architecture in this moment of crisis when perspective and computer-aided design
technologies have narrowed down the possibilities. In its performative dimension, video
mapping should allow for the shift of emphasis buildings appearances to processes of
formation grounded in imagined performances, indeterminate patterns and dynamics of use, and
poetics of spatial and temporal change (Kolarevic and Malkawi 212).
The urban space could be constructed on perceptual principles, and CAD systems are seriously
limited when it comes to simulating qualities of material, light and interaction with the natural
environment.
We have more to learn when applying image-technologies today from concepts
and techniques indebted to pre-perspective medieval pictorialism and perspectivebased pictorial art of the Renaissance than accounts in the history of art or visual
culture would generally suggest. (Brisbin 305)
Architectural video mapping holds precisely this promise of re-visiting the visual history, old
concepts and devices with new technological means. In addition, this process could bring the
communitys re-appropriation of historical landmarks through the convergence of ubiquitous
real time media with urban space, considered to be a constitutive frame for a distinctive
mode of social experience, in which cognition and affect are linked to space (McQuire 48).

In Perspective Lyrique, architectural video mapping by 1024 Architecture in Lyon, 2010, the public is able to
interact with the virtual simulation by speaking into a microphone, which then distorts the shape accordingly to an
audio analysis algorithm. Therefore, in addition to performativity, interactivity can also be activated.

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Works Cited:
Brisbin, Christopher Andrew. Images In Space & Space In/Within Images: Charting A Shifting
Dynamic In Architecture From Disembodied Viewpoint to Embodied Viewer. Diss. University
of Queensland, School of Architecture, 2010.
Holl, Steven, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Gmez Alberto Prez. Questions of Perception:
Phenomenology of Architecture. San Francisco, CA: William Stout, 2006. Print.
Kolarevic, Branko, and Ali Malkawi, eds. Performative Architecture: Beyond Instrumentality.
New York: Spon, 2005. Print.
Latour, Bruno, and Albena Yaneva. "Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move : An
ANT's View of Architecture." Bruno-latour.fr. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2012.
McQuire, Scott, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer, eds. Urban Screens Reader. Amsterdam:
Institute of Network Cultures, 2009. Print.
Sert, J.L., F. Lger, and S. Giedion. Architecture Culture: 1943-1968 : A Documentary
Anthology. Ed. Edward Eigen and Joan Ockman. New York, [NY: Columbia of Architecture,
1993. 29-30.
Vidler, Anthony. "Diagrams of Diagrams: Architectural
Representation." Representations 72.1 (2000): 1-20.

Abstraction

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Modern

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