Dance & Architecture
Designing as a Dancer
From the kernel of an idea to the realization of a design, the designer acts as a choreographer. I have always had a particular keenness to the design process as a dance as I have practiced both. The notion on composing spaces as a choreographer has influenced my designs, hence I have named it “Choreographing Space”. The use of plastic forms synonymous with those of a dancer are captured here through structure and movement. A dance can be many things and have layered meanings. They can be allegorical or abstract, exuberant or melancholy and some- times both.
In my search for the synthesis of dance and architecture I needed to find a means of expressing space both from within and out. Thinking and designing spaces as a choreographer puts you at once as the viewer and the one being viewed. We express ourselves with our own invisible envelopes by movement and gesture. There is a myriad of ways in which each person communicates with the other. In many cases this expression of self is a byproduct of our cultural values and at others it can be the culmination of emotional energy acted out spontaneously. The expression of self from within is the hidden language and it carries deep sometimes subconscious actions.
Given this premise, the act of creating space must consider time as an active ingredient. Time can be thought of experientially, as if walking through space or as a transformational act, during formalization of space. To illustrate I am including images which are abstractions of space. They are models, animations and drawings. The images in this portfolio represent projects, some built and others not. All were created by simulating the dancer’s “muscle memory”. In dance the definition of “Muscle Memory” is the body’s internal language of movement which is expressed through the coordination of our muscles and skeleton.
My portfolio is part of a continuum of pieces which I have worked on over the last twenty years. In coordinating my work, I have tried to illustrate my concepts by pulling together some of my earlier works, as they are the foundation from which I have built my designs. To support the earlier work, I have also included a catalog which chronicles my work to present day.
Defining the Concepts
The creation of space and form has traditionally been in the realm of the inanimate and static world most often represented as drawings and cardboard models. The idea of choreographing space comes from the premise that spatial conceptualization resides in a kinetic realm. I have defined three forms of kinetic spatial concepts that I work with, below:
Space as observed in motion. The eye moves, the person moves, the sun changes, yet the object is static. The development of choreographed designs addresses the change of perceptible space while moving around the object.
Space as created by motion. Kinetic sculptures, wind vanes, water fountains are some of the designed objects that depend on motion. We see objects differently as they change in color or materiality or by reflectance and intensity. These changes are due to external forces acting on them.
Space as perceptually altered by transformation. The metamorphosis of plastic forms, due to internal forces, transform over time. These changes are due to internal forces acting on them.
Kinetic Structure
Buildings, like the human frame, have their own dynamic language and when captured become as important to the formal creation as the shape itself.
The Choreographed Space is illustrated graphically below. The top image shows the superimposition of a dancer and a structure. The dancer is in a high releve’ in preparation to release. In the same sense the structure is also in a high position. The membrane of the structure must expand vertically reflecting the skeletons force. When choreographed this structure externalizes its internal energies.
The lower image illustrates the dancer and structure after the release of energy. This is the controlled result of a fall. In each image the structure creates a completely different shape of the body. The forces in the structure have changed and the resulting external shape has changed.
To summarize, choreographed spaces are in part transformed structures. This synthetic transformation can simulate our imagination and engage the observer to experience the designs in motion.
Muscle Memory
Your hand glides down to the paper. In preparation for your next design scheme, you're organizing the ideas. In your first impulse the pencil glides across the paper. In an attempt to clarify and test the ideas begin to overlap. There are lines with several movements. The experience of putting pencil to paper is synonymous with dancing. At the beginning you're slow and you need to warmup. After a few attempts your fingers are limber and the pencil has the right feel; you're moving.
Every one of these warmup exercises are familiar. It takes a few starts. A new sheet of paper. Slowly you begin to feel a connection with your movement. One piece of tracing over another, a pattern evolves. The first steps are always difficult but after some familiar phrases you become one with your craft.
In drawing and designing you take for granted the coordination of idea to paper transformation. Your lines are a movement across the stage. Your floor is the framed by the edge of the paper. Within that area you create a work you have envisioned and now it is coming into view on paper. It's your new work, or maybe it’s a piece you've executed before. It doesn't matter. There are patterns on the paper and if you could have videotaped your movements you could recreate that period of time in which you performed. You might even want to start making changes to that last performance, start refining the gestures.
In 'choreographing space' you do just that. After sketching out the basic pattern you can start to isolate the movements, make phrases, isolate parts or capture one long statements. These are some of the possibilities. In dancing, the dancer coordinates a variety of movements prescribed by the choreographer. Those integrated movements represent years of practice. This refined movement has often been called 'muscle memory'.
If you tried to climb a series of stairs by thinking about each separate move you would probably stumble a few times. We take for granted our daily movement. Those are the coordinated movements which allow us to transport and transform our bodies every day of our lives. The different ways in which we execute these movements is part of our personality. We can tell how a person feels just by watching them move. In this portfolio I create dances with the assistance of computer graphics. By encoding in the computer
with the movements one can generate images. These images are principally different because they are in a dynamic state. By creating images with the computer, you can simulate what is called "muscle memory". What separates the idea creation with computer graphics from hand drawings are their ability to change in entire drawings or designs by changing a portion of a phrase. In doing this (the image, now a network of integrated movements) is transformed into a much-varied shapes.
In the following pages are a language which defines the types of movements one can use in exploring spatial representations. These three-dimensional images are called models. The vocabulary of movement that I am developing is a parallel to the dance technique developed by Jose' Limon. This particular movement is developed through an understanding of the anatomical structure in relationship to the control of the body and weight. The eight components of the technique are: 1. Floor 2. Center 3. Across the Floor 4. Labanotation 5. Suspension 6. Rhythm 7. Pattern and 8. Sequence.
Floor
This dancer above illustrates the transformation of shapes from a fixed position in a floor exercise.A floor series is an exercise of warm-ups which are performed at the dance studio prior to a dance.The floor series is a preparation for more complex movements where the dancer stabilizes certain isolated parts of the body while sitting on the floor.In summary, arrange of motion is explored around a fixed point.
In the row house below, the diagram acts as if body were the spine of a dancer or in this case a core of a building. The core acts as the pivot, the transformation of the spatial model is generated from this integrated rotation about the spine.The spinal link passes through the center of the house creating a simple isolated rotation similar to the dancer on the floor. Each shape can be explored as a movement around the fixed point.
Center
In the dance class after the floor exercises comes the “center”. In center you learn to balance the weight of the body while shifting the center. This exercise, in essence, trains the dancer in the laws of gravity in relationship to their own weight. In this particular project housing is based around the center of a unit. The center (this time) is the center of the house or the vertical circulation. This spine, the place where all activities connect, is the point of balance.
After designing the unit as a network of connected zones it is possible to examine them from different weight placements.The illustration below takes the design process into three dimensional modeling. Unlike sketching, in the traditional sense, this volumetric design process goes directly into phrasing. Phrasing is best described here as grouping of movements that act on a body simultaneously. This takes the design process into the third dimension immediately opposed to a plan and section representations.
Across the Floor
This design study explores the different types of spatial perception when a viewer moves around and through spaces and shapes. The project here a museum explores all parts of movement by focusing on the actual movement of the observer and how that effects the perception of the shape and place are percieved.
In this three dimensional model the blue line or trajectory illustrates the primary mode of travel through the museums entry hall. While moving through space observer can focus on the details of specific areas that are designed as landmarks by stopping and redirecting their path of travel. From this system of observations many other paths are possible for study putting designers in a more perceptual analysis of space. The point, spatial perception can explored in a three dimensional model giving designers a more accurate view of a proposed design.
Labanotation
Labanotation is a system of recording the dance movements of a body or a series of bodies by indicating movement through the use of symbols. Similarly the computer has its own symbol language which allows you to “score”a structure.The sketches below illustrate the sketch of a project with notation as if a dance or a score. Phrasing as illustrated in the three previous dance analogies illustrating the similarity of scoring buildings as if they are groups of movements. Hence the resultant model takes on a dynamic state.
As in the anatomical analogy of the body the joints and parts of a body which work as an interconnected unit so can the building or designed object have a similar structure. This places the building design in a dynamic structure opposed to the static representation of a drawing on paper. Even though the notation is sketched about the model it is built to the specification of the idea of rotation descriptions on the sketch. Here lies the change in three dimensional conception of space from hand to computer model.
Suspension
Using ‘scoring notation’, as described earlier here are a series of examples where phrasing is used to formulate spatial concepts. Suspension is a more ethereal expression and pushes the envelope of spatial creation to concepts integrating engineering concepts. Tensile structures are a derivative of this type of language. Illustrated above is a dancer superimposed onto tensile cables which are part of an urban plaza tensile structure.
The entire design project had varying
levels of suspension concepts throughout.
A suspension model emulates weightlessness and the structures tend to be more pronounced. The application of this type of model usually responds to large uninterrupted spaces, typically stadiums and or athletic facilities.
Rhythm
The illustration above shows the first series where dancers are internal forces in model creation. See earlier descriptions of muscle memory which are clearly illustrated above. This continuation of the model on the previous page explores the development of the massing. Spacing and frequency are rhythmical descriptions of spaces in the model. The spacing of these columns or more accurately bays are part of the process of constructing spaces. Changes in rhythm allow you to create more bays or fewer bays within each space at different frequencies.
The multi fenestrated box can also be varied in the same way. For example, the overall size of the windows can be changed so that the box gets larger and proportionally to the size of the modules created. Another variation would be to reduce the size of the modules but create more of them. A third variation would be to vary the modulation within the form itself so that you can generate a non-symmetrical modulation. With this description you can begin to feel the creation of models as a performance. These are dynamic modular structures.
Pattern
This next model represents a project created which was part of a dormitory design. This study of massing shows the different pattern isolations explored.Each pattern isolation was constructed as a pattern of massing; this takes ‘rhythm or modulation’ into larger sets of moves.
The drawings below are interpretations of the designers concept of modular groupings. It is interesting to note that the structuring of the system was also a discovery of patterns. The diagram of dancers inside the envelope illustrate the different patterns elicited by modifying the internal forces as a dancer uses muscle and breathing.
Sequence
This last illustration of the coliseum shows a person circling a miniature model above and real coliseum sketch below. The perception of space as an abstraction can be seen in motion in animated computer models. This recent development of abstraction greatly enhances the prebuilt models ability to illustrate final products and by doing so alters the actual perception of product.
Animated computer models can be realistic and abstract.They allow you to pick a specific viewing path through the space.
As modeling and animation advances our the ability to walk-through a model in realtime (you set the path) will become a common presentation techniques. Animation is not the only type of dynamic modeling which will impact design process. The use of dynamic light modeling and other natural criteria can be placed or grafted onto models to assist in the dynamic modeling in the near future.