Over a few billion millennia, the human body have evolved the senses for which to recognize the environment, elicit a response, and therefore survives to be who we are today. However, such senses are only our psychological interpretation of things, processed by the brain. Such concept of phenomenology would then not be too hard to grasp considering that we are only a creature of thoughts and feelings - processors of the qualities of our surrounding that is perceptible to us, oh which is coined the word “phenomena”. “Noumena” is on the other hand, objects as things-in-themselves, out-of-grasp of human experience. In terms of design, it might then be logical to agree on the fact that design is done to bring out a particular response or experience from the users, and therefore, does not require a rigid control of the “noumena”, as long as the required “phenomena” is acheived.
 |
| Sensorial Deprivation Chamber |
How design can elicit a very different experience can be exemplified by the invention of the armed forces of NATO - the sensory deprivation tank. A device for interrogating prisoners within international treaty obligations, the tank is filled with liquid perflurocarbon - dubbed “breathable liquid”, and the subject are submerged inside - deprived of all sensorial stimuli. Such device can give a feeling similar to a near-death experience, where a person feels that he/she have drowned and has entered a different world, normally described as those that is a tunnel ending with bright-lighted ending. This experience is very real - yet, is a complete phenomenological process.
 |
| Near-Death Experience |
Architectural, the Hogwarts Castle in the new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at the Universal Studio Orlando poses a very interesting question- whether the castle is real or not. Bricks and stone wise- the volume is real and touchable. However, the “noumena” of being the Hogwarts castle is very questionable, as on the ride inside, visitors experience some interior castle architecture scenes that are very real but yet a product of state-of-the-art 3D projection technology. Is it, then, adequate to build a facade and to use other means of construction to create an interior that would elicit the same response from the users as would the real physical interior do?
 |
| Virtual Architecture of the Hogwarts Castle |
 |
| Albert Durer's 'Cone of Vision' |
Such concept is utilised in Sira Shafiei’s conceptual work “The Magician’s Theatre, Rome”. Governed by her research on Harry’s Houdini’s Elephant trick and how it can be manifested within Albert Durer’s cone of vision, the design addresses the sensorial interaction of the users between user-object and user-user without actually building anything ‘solid’. Text - and cone- anamorphosis, along with dispersed perspectival illusion, are used to create landscapes and tectonics that are revealed only to dynamic users. The architecture is described by the architect as “constructed, choreographed...sacred and sublime”. Such works raises the question whether architecture must be real, or whether or not it can be designed as a device that can bring out the same experience without actually being what it appears to be.
 |
| The Planes of the Architecture, based on Durer's 'Cone of Vision' |
 |
| "The Magician's Theatre in Rome" |
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น