11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 2 | Experiential Simulation | The sensory perception of the built environment

Envisioning architecture interiors through model photography: Caruso St John Architects

ABSTRACT

Through the examination of the work of Caruso St John, this inquiry addresses some of the attributes of model photography that might be considered significant to respond to the firm’s aspirations in terms of visualization and discusses the way this representation device is modulated to perform as a working tool in the design process. Considering model photography has been referred to as a means to access the future atmosphere of the built environment, it also aspires to critically examine some of their general potentials and limitations of in terms of accomplishing this. The path taken combines a brief description of some key aspects of the offices’ approach to architecture with a visual comparison between images of physical models and those of the built outcome of the Brick House project in London.
Employed in a process of empirical experimentation, the realistic models photographs are found to be helpful to convincingly evaluate the situated performance of aspects such as material appearance and natural lighting, thus responding to the architects’ intentions of designing interior spaces that have appropriate character and may offer meaningful sensorial experiences.
The images by Caruso St John are found to pursuit minimal ocular distortion, but also sustain a descriptive gaze and attaining seductive visual expression, being interpreted here as a stylized realism, with ambivalent relationship with the disclosure of future perception. By means of their sharp visual objectivity, they place factors directly related to the building’s material and spatial configurations as the sole ingredients of the generations of potential atmospheres. Their realism, however, may stimulate the observer’s imagination, hence evoking of more complex situations drawn from his own sensorial experiences. In their silence and emptiness, they also remain open to conjectures regarding the potentials of architecture as a liveable space.

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AUTHOR

Pedro Engel

PROARQ – FAU-UFRJ, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil – Bolsista CAPESd

Pedro Engel holds an architect degree from the Federal University do Rio Grande do Sul (Ufrgs) and a Master of Science degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Ufrj). Since 2009 teaches first year design studios at the Department of Representation and Analysis of Form at Ufrj and participates in the research group META (Methodology, Education and Architectural Theory). He is currently developing a PhD thesis in PROARQ-Ufrj concerning the use of model photography in contemporary architecture having been sponsored by CAPES to do part of his research in the Universdad Politécnica de Cataluña in Barcelona.

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