Designing Architectural Experiences: Using Computers to Construct Temporal 3D Narratives (1995)
article⁄Designing Architectural Experiences: Using Computers to Construct Temporal 3D Narratives (1995)
abstract⁄Computers are launching us into a representational revolution that fundamentally challenges the way we have hitherto conceived and practiced architecture. This paper will explore one of its fronts the simulation of architectural experiences. Today’s offtheshelf softwares e.g. 3D modeling, animations, multimedia allow us for first time in history to depict and thus approach architectural design and criticism truly experientially. What is so appealing about this is the possibility of shifting our attention from the object to the experience of the object and in so doing reconceptualizing architectural design as the design of architectural experiences. Carrying forward such a phenomenological proposition requires us to know 1 how to work with nontraditional and ‘quasiimmersive’ or subjectcentered representational systems, and 2 how to construct temporal assemblages of experiential events that unfold not unlike ‘architectural stories’. As our discipline lacks enough knowledge on this area, importing models from other fields appears as an appropriate starting point. In this sense, the narrative arts especially those involved with the temporal representation of audiovisual narratives offer us the best insights. For example, principles of cinema and storytelling give us an excellent guidance for designing architectural experiences that have a structuring theme parti, a plot order, unfolding episodes rhythm, and special events details. Approaching architecture as a temporal 3D narrative does transform the design process and, consequently, its results. For instance, 1 phenomenological issues enter the decision making process in an equal footing to functional, technological, or compositional considerations 2 orthographic representations become secondary sources of information, mostly used for later accurate dimensioning or geometrization 3 multisensory qualities beyond sight are seriously considered particularly sound, texture, and kinesthetic etc.
