a space based on a narrative a narrative based on space 00:00 (due to an accidental collision into the work of Diploma 10 as taught by Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates)
the layering of a chronological sequence of moments or events in accordance with the portrayal of anthropocentric experience – the experientiality which is inherent in human experience and feelings, and depiction perceptions and reflections.
narrative as an embedded component of the human condition; holding the same beginning as the history of man; there has never existed any place, or any body of life devoid of the narrative.
An ideal looking glass to the beginnings of the overlap between narrative (in terms of event) and space is the methods carried out in Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates “ways of doing” at the Architectural Association, while leading Diploma 10. It is not the intention of this paper to weigh the effectivity of space based on narrative against that of narrative based on space, but rather to consider the effectivity of each singularly.
Diploma 10, as taught by Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates, was the laboratory for ideology on event as space. Spanning across dual academic cycles, Tschumi and Coates directed the unit between the projects which stemmed directly from a root being a literary piece of text, and immersing with the city they inhabited in order to construct narrative. Tschumi recognises the disjunction between the major oppositions of conceptual and perceptual facets of architecture and describes, “On the one hand, architecture as a thing of the mind, a dematerialized or conceptual discipline with its typological and morphological variations, and on the other, architecture as an empirical event that concentrates on the senses, on the experience of space.” In his essay ‘Space and Events’ (1983), Tschumi reiterates how during the initial phase, each selected piece of literature served as a ‘framework for the analysis of the relations’ connecting the program and the site, a thought he cultivated through his engagement with Poe, amongst many other writers. He progressed this ideology by instigating conversation around the ways by which architects could manoeuvre the devices which writers utilise to alter form and structure, implying that the eloquent manipulation of plot, grammar, and language are practices architects should consider employing:
How extensively could the literary narrative influence the arrangement of events in space, in the sense of programme, activity, function, or usage? If writers attain the ability to morph the structure of narrative in a similar manner to how they’re able to create plays on vocabulary and grammar, shouldn’t architects attaint the same ability, creating the program, relative to the space, in an equivalently objective, separate, or fictional manner? If architects are perfectly cable of utilizing, sometimes haphazardly, tools such as reiteration, deformation, or juxtaposition in the construction of the formal elements of a space, are they not capable of utilising the same devices in terms of narrating the activities that occurred within that space? Coates, in the late 1980’s, was at the forefront of introducing a narrative theory and practice into architectural works.the pursuit of architectural meaning, Coates frames an architecture that takes account of the human experience, with narrative working in parallel to the basic architectural language to add depth and meaning. To quote him directly, he states, “On the one hand the physical nature of architecture makes it comparable to the physical object of a book, which sits between the author and the reader. On the other hand buildings can be invested with narrative content by the architect in ways that are only possible through the medium of space. Having both substance and void, content and relations, space is a medium ready to soak up associative meaning.”
If one were to compare the elementary characteristics which are seen to be “constant elements” or the literary narrative, fragmentised into thirds, they could be expressed as follows The setup, the initial segment, marks the introduction of the central characters and their respective state of affairs are presented for the first time. This fragment of the narrative initiates the earliest act of characterization. Simultaneously, some form of issue or problem is presented, propelling the story onwards. This is followed by the conflict, which constitutes the majority of the story, beginning when a catalyst (being an event, character, or object) sets things into motion. This is fragment of the narrative during which the characters experience a shift in the initial trajectory of their activities in consequence to the conflict; entitled the character arc, or character development. Ultimately, the conclusive act, or resolution, is when the conflict in the story reaches its peak of crescendo, pressuring the characters to address it, causing all the fragmented aspects of the narrative to convene – ineluctably leading to the ending.
While the description above is highly over-simplified, the ‘structural logic’ to narrative can be likened to a web of intricate processes. The combination of its processes informs our thoughts on a plot, or a space, or our overall reasoning. One can infer the link between this structure and the process of architectural design is how a play on thought is capable of creating an experience along the same line as poetry. Hence, the nature of this link is a poetic facet that may be seen as a ‘delight’ or serendipity in architecture. It could be argued that this quality comes closer to tangibility within the design process. In Tschumi’s perspective, applying the tools of structural logic to the act of designing, is more beneficial in terms of raising question marks in response to ones own proposed solutions, instead of forming an argument in favor for the suitability of an initial response. There is a trajectory common to the two types of reasoning which is opened up largely through the act of speculating (which has adopted the term “design concept”) and brought to a close in some form of conjecture (or in the architectural sense, the physical project). In Tschumi’s perspective, this duality of conditions control the key moment when a spectator transitions from the cognisance of a concept to sensing it as an experience.
In architecture and disjunction, Tshumi states, “Architecture is the only organism engaged in constant intercourse with users, whose bodies brush against the carefully established rules of architectural thought – the architect designs the set, writes the script, and directs the actors”. However, in contrast with the written narrative, the architect is never fully in control with the events which unravel within a the space created – while they can direct, confine, presume and possibly seduce the action of the user within the space, they never attain universal control over the implications of the “event” created by the users rather than the space – or the nature of the incidents which may occur within the space.
Inescapably, there is a subtle relationship of reciprocity where the user infuses their own independence upon this space. Subsequently, this creates a dichotomy of challenge between the architect’s construction and the user. Tschumi refers to this dichotomy as “pragmatic ‘violence’ – between events (users and actions) and architecture (space and programs)”. This reciprocity between user and building at its most confrontational, approaches the conditions of performance as it unfolds primarily through movement and stages of perception. Here, one begins to see the manifest link between architecture and cinema in the sense of the narrative. As director John Maybury stated in referent to the commonalities found in both architecture and film, “Architecture and cinema share the same cocktail of magic realism and deceptive illusion in tat both are essentially fraudulent”. However, in some sense, the narrative lacks some percentile of that “magic realism” in architecture due to the higher threshold in transparency found in architecture in comparison to that of cinema.
Cut-away
Evidently, in the standard cut-away transition, the filmmaker shifts from one action to another, subsequently abruptly returning to the action. This form of transition is used remove tedious scenes (such as a commute to a destination) or emphasise tension in a shot by altering the speed of the – Fade
This usually conveys the opening or closing of a scene, specifically when fading to Dynamic cutting
When transitioning between shots is intentionally blatantly obvious to the viewer. The transition usually alarms the audience by shifting abruptly in time or space or through prompt cutting for suggestive or narrative points. Defocus Transition:
A form of transitioning involving manipulating the lens focus to the point that the scene is left completely out of focus. The elapsing of time within the space of the scene is often portrayed through re-adjusting the focus in the shot after variations have taken place: altered object positions, adjusted light conditions, and other aspects of space that tend to remain in continuity. The human mind tends to accept illusion in spaces where they are expected to conform to a lack of logic in the continuity of elements of a space relative to time. In film, within the span of a millisecond, your entire understanding of space is erased and substituted with an unforeseen “other”. The film-maker is not bounded by location or the limitations of time. The ability to transition through space and time abruptly in order to contain an expanded narrative into a confined frame count is non existent in the realm of the architectural. While the film maker can “cut-away” into the next location, the architect must seamlessly unravel the narrative within the boundaries, or lack there of, of the space in question. The event(s) central to that narrative (in their present time frame) are not observed through a the predetermined angle of a video camera, whose speed across the subject is in control by the creator of the narrative. The observer, being inhabitant or visitor, of the architectural space, compared to the observer of the film, is free to wander in perception of the space. This can either work in favour or against the architect. At the same time, this creates a myriad of layers to the “intended” narrative , due to the fact that each observer will experience the space from a different view point, both figuratively and literally, creating a series of sub narratives which may or may not intersect as multiple individuals experience the space simultaneously. On another level, the notion of the varying present plays a role in the structuring of the architectural narrative that the film, contrastingly, is immune to. How the event unravels within the space is largely dependent on conditions of space at the particular moment of one’s experience of it. External aspects such as light, temperature, sound, human density, and so on, all influence ones experience of an event or a space, or an event in a space. While a film-maker attains total control over the collective forms of input, the architect must pre-calculate possible external interventions in order to evade their interference in the narrative, but cannot entirely evade their effects. While the space of the film creates a clear distinction between the inhabitant (the characters within the film) – and the visitor (the audience members) – the architectural space does not discriminate between the two. Hence, while the visitor may experience a series of walls framing the event, (either figuratively or literally), which draw their focus in to certain elements of the narrative, the inhabitant will eventually surpass these walls, either obstructing the order of the predisposed narrative or acquiring an active role in the event.
Enter the story board: The story board of an event, as created by the architect, generally acts as a means of translation betweenen the immateriality of the conceptual and the directness of the experience of the event. In some sense, the story board, serving the same role to the architect as the script to the film maker, can be seen as a metaphor of the program of the space. The fact that it portrays a series of stills of the event somehow deems it separate to the space, since it suggests an idealised version of how the event is to play out without taking into account the external factors previously mentioned, or the transition from the viewer (which the story board is normally seen through the eyes of-) to the performer. For the story board to serve as an effective form of representation of the unravelling of the event relative to the space – it should operate at two levels – corresponding to the experience of the space relative to the event- as the nature of the tedious within it.
2 The subjectivity of experience echoes the regard of architecture as a cultural project. The experience of space constitutes a fragment of an intricate net that blurs the boundary which separatesthe object, subject, and the effects associated with a space; ultimately imposing the question of the state of causality. These architectural effects do not simply convey a differentiation between the object and its effects, but extend to the description of the how these effects employ time and space to assemble and impair connections interlinking the subject and object. In some sense, this begins to explain why the narrative analysis of a space based on subjectivity paralyses the possibility of establishing an objective opinion through the representation of this analysis. In some sense, I would argue that the filter of representation associated with the defining roles of the “object” , “subject” , and “effects” of a space tend to offer a diminished view of the overall – reducing the possibility of instigating dissimilar opinion or experience.
Do either forms of comprehending a space, through direct use or external perception, involve an adequate understanding which would provide for a relay of information, or a narration of space? Assuming that the narrative associated with a space requires a certain level of familiarity, or inhabitation, that is independent of representation, then the answer would seem to be no. The curious citizen could effortlessly stumble upon some form of architectural narrative anywhere. Narratives emerge sporadically across any threshold – from interior to exterior, private to public, individual encounter to common myth. However, in my opinion, narrative may either relate to the memory which an individual subconsciously or actively relates to a space – or the memory of an event which leaves traces in a space – regardless, the event relies on the variable of time – which when absent leaves the space devoid of “narrative” to the passerby.
Although the assumption could be made, or somewhat generalized, that the architect is likely to be completely attentive to the events insitu, how thorough of an understanding can he acquire considering the transience of the visit and its limitation in terms of duration? I would argue that architectural aspect of observation with the aim of reconstruction of the narrative could lead to a certain level of ‘appropriation’ of the space on the architects part. Hence, the narrated representation becomes based on that appropriation which is directly related to the variable of time; whether or not the initial experience is continuous or interrupted; and the possibility of the identical recurrence of the experience.
The architect draws insitu not so much as to represent, but as to know. Thus, the act of observing is translated through thought to drawing. In the case of a story board depicting a series of chronological “observations of event” , the narrative would then be limited to the one sided view of said visitor, and hence can scarcely be attributed as a representative of the space, because a reading of that representation would then become a reading of the experience of a single visitor at a passing moment, rather than a reading of the experience of the subject, or object, of that space. The reader of the representation can neither classify themselves as the visitor or the inhabitant of space, due to the fact that he is in essence, neither. For the inhabitant, through time, one eventually composes a mental map which sets pieces of the space in a time space continuum. For the visitor, or the architect acting as the observer, a drawing based on observation would probably attain less association to a “story board” and possibly a closer resemblance to forensic photography – a series of images of traces, stitched together in order to attempt to recreate an event, or portray subliminal hints to the memory of an event, rather than the essence of the narrative itself. The elements considered essential to forensic photography are said to be the subject, the scale, and a reference object. This redundant trilogy is ironically similar to the ruleset by which an architect in situ abides by in their endeavour to portray a space based on observation.
Thus, the analytical processes of the representation of narrative serve as a means to a synthetic, interpretive end for the architect who existed in-situ, but cannot be relayed and hence become purely representational of thought, rather than elements of space.
In this exchange, the duration and intensity of the subject’s time spent observing insitu produces the object’s ‘effects’. In a peculiar twist of the architectural plot, the closer the architect comes to the reality of space, the more intricate the lattice of fiction he begins to weave can become. In other words, the greater the understanding of building, or space’s, physical features in reality, the craters and traces of its creation, the weathering over time or foundation of its structure; the more one is able to construct a narrative of event centralised on the space itself. When considering the structure of the conventional literary or filmic narrative, events tend to unravel relative to a time-based metre. However, in terms of an architectural narrative the component of time is constantly changing in reaction to the immutability of the physical structure.
0:01
Enter the story board: The story board of an event, as created by the architect, generally acts as a means of translation betweenen the immateriality of the conceptual and the directness of the experience of the event. In some sense, the story board, serving the same role to the architect as the script to the film maker, can be seen as a metaphor of the program of the space. The fact that it portrays a series of stills of the event somehow deems it separate to the space, since it suggests an idealised version of how the event is to play out without taking into account the external factors previously mentioned, or the transition from the viewer (which the story board is normally seen through the eyes of-) to the performer. For the story board to serve as an effective form of representation of the unravelling of the event relative to the space – it should operate at two levels – corresponding to the experience of the space relative to the event- as the nature of the tedious within it.