Redesigning architecture through photography

This paper focuses on the possibility of (re)designing architecture virtually with the help of one of the most important representation tools: Photography. Various digital processes like stitching multiple photos together and mirroring images in image editing software like Photoshop, allow this virtual architecture to take place in virtual environments. Photography can be util ized in the process of ‘constructing’ a new space -that we can call ‘narrative space’-from an existing spatial body. This narrative space can also be defined as a ‘manufactured metaspace’ which is a space beyond reality and representation: A constructed real ity that exists solely in digital realms l ike Second Life. ARCHITECTURE AND REPRESENTATION Depending on facilities and technologies available at various periods of the world history, architects used various tools like drawings, paintings, miniatures, models, computers, fine arts platforms to represent their design before and after construction. Figures 1 & 2. Left: An “architectural” greeting card. Right: Lego architecture “Representation includes everything people construct to be known as a visual record or figurative manifestation of that reality. [...] Within this approach, architects usually reduce the definition of representation to the creation of such visual forms as drawings or models that selectively double or imitate the physical reality of a building. I would like to move beyond this traditional view to define representation as a culture-specific and EVA 2008 London Conference ~ 22-24 July Murat Germen _____________________________________________________________________ 96 dynamic process of establishing the relationships between reality and the signscreated to symbolize this reality. In this process, reality becomes thinkable, and its meanings are symbolically assigned.” [1.1] Figures 3 & 4. Ottoman miniatures depicting Bagdad (left) and Istanbul (right) by Matrakci Nasuh. “In general, buildings do not communicate but represent, a distinction essential to the study of architectural specificity of thought. [...] This representational process is far more complex and dynamic than the process of sending, preserving, retrieving, and decoding well-formed messages. [...] Buildings and cities represent when they serve as repositories of materialized concepts that manifest how people have defined themselves in their lived reality. [...] In this way, a building becomes a repository of cultural memory and helps to expand the sense of reality beyond the here and now. Any piece of architecture functions in this manner when its value is found in the interconnections it establishes with other buildings, practices of everyday life, social structures, attributes of the natural environment, or metaphysical concepts, although many aspects of these relationships may be perceivable only to people identifying with the local culture(s). This process of establishing a symbolic network of relationships can be viewed as analogous to what Jean-François Lyotard calls the emergence of representational consciousness. He observes that the viewer's accumulation of experiences and the delay of the immediacy of reaction to what is being perceived at a particular moment show “how perception stops being 'pure', i.e., instantaneous, and how representational consciousness can be born of this reflection (in the optical sense), of this 'echo,' of the influx on the set of other possible — but currently ignored — paths which form memory”. Through this process, according to Lyotard, human thoughts establish networks of relationships within functioning concepts of reality. [...] As the space of representation, a building only foregrounds concepts of reality and implies modes of thought and perception. For example, it invites a tacit dialogue between old and new, or between a culturally shared and a personal sense of reality. Whatever exists or happens in a building, we interact with it symbolically. Any building admits EVA 2008 London Conference ~ 22-24 July Murat Germen _____________________________________________________________________ 97 various and even conflicting concepts of reality. [...] Such hybridity of meanings is possible because concepts of reality and physical forms of buildings, although symbolically related, are never fully codependent; they are differently constructed. [...] Because buildings do not impose concepts of reality but make them thinkable, many concepts may coexist and be in symbolic dialogue with one another within a physical space. [...] Similarly, it does matter how a person interacting with a building finds personal relevance in this interaction. To reveal these kinds of meanings, the building must somehow engage, like Lacan's mirror, a personal sense of reality.” [1.2] This personal sense of reality makes us question the inherent nature of the concept of ‘representation’ and helps us to extend it into a more flexible (and maybe more correct) notion / formulation of ‘re-presentation.’ Figure 5. Panoramic photograph of Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul showing both ends of the large pedestrian artery: A personal sense of reality, in other words “re-presentation.” Photo by Murat Germen, Istanbul, Turkey. Movie industry is another platform in which representation has a significant part, especially when it comes to adapting / altering / converting cities for particular needs such as creating futuristic sci-fi cities / architecture that never existed. A particular type of illustration called “matte painting” created by illustrators (and not architects) usually serve as departing points for such architecture. The fact that illustrators can create virtual architecture can also lead to the assumption that photographers who can read space properly can use photography as a tool to re-invent, re-interpret and re-form architecture. The urban space created in Luc Besson’s renowned movie “The Fifth Element” is one of the best examples where an “almost impossible” artificial architecture is envisioned and implemented as a simulation. The complicated upwards and sidewards stretch of the built environment takes the limited one-axis 3D volume structure to a richer multiple-axes structure which allow circulation in all directions andnot only horizontal direction as