KULTHIDA SONGKITTIPAKDEE FROM HAS DESIGN AND RESEARCH REINTERPRETS THE TRANSPARENCY OF SPACE AND MATERIALS AS TOOLS TO DEVELOP AN UNBOUND, MYSTERIOUS, AND INFINITE PERCEPTION TOWARDS ARCHITECTURE
TEXT: KULTHIDA SONGKITTIPAKDEE
PHOTO CREDIT AS NOTED
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There is a rock. It’s solid, rigid and sits majestically.
There is another rock. Deteriorated by nature, its sporadic holes allow it to breathe, for water and wind to flow and pass through.
Despite being the same material, the two rocks are treated differently, causing people’s perceptions of them to also be entirely different as a result.
An American artist, Gordon Matta-Clark, did an experiment by cutting holes in a deserted building in attempt to bring it back to life. The dense interior walls were used to connect the spaces together while openings on the exterior walls created ambiguous spatial passages that confused the lines dividing the inside and the outside. A W-HOLE HOUSE and CONICAL INTERSECT, the projects he experimented between 1972 and 1975 surprised and inspired the young generation architects at the time such as Rem Kookhass, Thom Mayne and Steven Holl. The superimposing of spaces conceived from the interconnected flows between the outside environment and interior spaces develops a sophisticated link within those deserted architectural structures. If Matta-Clark’s works were comparing architecture to the human body, these structures would need to be given a well-circulated blood flow and pulses in order to be resurrected back to life.
When openings serve as a mediator of interactions between the inside and outside, negative spaces and voids represent the respiration. To create a new experience of human sensory through visual perception, this particular spatial element that Matta-Clark was trying out with his works becomes a tool for architects to build illusions and the ambiguous spaces inside buildings they design up until this day. If we were to categories the perceptions that HAS design and research has devised for it architectural creations, there are three different approaches that can be discussed.
Unbound perception
By dissolving a boundary between and discernible perception of interior and exterior, a space can be created. Asa de Zanotta is one of the examples with its architect’s use of a single arched mirror, extra thick transparent glass roof and structural components hidden inside the walls, enabling interior and exterior spaces to seamlessly blend to the point where the border becomes unidentifiable.
The interior space of Casa de Zanotta whose design uses a single piece of glass to render magical interactions with the outside environment l Photo: Gun Yang
With Casa de Zanotta, the architect restricts the perspective to create more privacy for the restroom, causing the opening to link the space to the outside surroundings, revealing only the sky and the ground l Photo: Gun Yang
From the outside, the building reveals itself in a different dimension at nighttime. The physical attributes of the transparent glass embellishes how spectators imagine the exterior components of the building, which are designed to magically merge themselves as a part of the interior elements, similar to what MoMA had accomplished
The main entrance of MaMA is designed for the building’s exterior components to generate and become an integral part of the building’s interior elements l Photo: W Workspace
Another perception is the deviation of a perceived image into a stage of obscurity, consequently rendering a ‘mysterious perception’ to stimulating spectators’ doubts and imagination about what is happening behind the opening. The Glade Bookstore exemplifies such a phenomenon. The translucent glass opening partitions the bookstore’s interior space from the outside, defining how the space can be perceived and experienced using the blurry display of the products as an appeal to attract visitors inside of the building.
This very same approach can be found in HAS’ research conducted through the context of an urban village in Guangzhou and its high-density population and residents of diverse age groups. In that urban community, there is a shop selling adult toys that opens 24 hours. A white, translucent plastic curtain us used to censor the products, preventing children in the neighborhood from seeing what’s inside of the shop. But the attempt to censor, on the other hand, stimulates the curiosity of adults, consequently attracting them to walk inside
The use of locally available materials to distort the image and prevent the children from seeing what’s inside the 24-hour shop selling adult toys in a community called Sanyuanli in Guangzhou. This is one of HAS’ researches done of an urban context l Photo: HAS design and research
The translucent glass partitions the inside of The Glade Bookstore from the outside pavement, obscuring the perception of the space l Photo: Yu Bai
When the image appears through the opening differs from the realty experiencing before the eye, ‘infinite perceptions’ are created. By turning and deviating, new images are conceived through visuals reflected from an interior space and the building’s surrounding context, tricking spectators from distinguishing the reality from the reflected image they see at first glance, and as a result, creating vast infinite illusions within an architectural space
Reflections inside the entrance tunnel of MoMA with reversed perspective reveals the inside of the building, creating infinitely interconnected visuals l Photo: W Workspace
The symmetry at the entrance area of The Glade Bookstore reveals a new perception that is different from reality l Photo: Yu Bai
The perception of emptiness has become one of the strategies in architectural design that aims to fulfill people’s need and search for a space with satisfying qualities. Meanwhile, it facilitates interactions between architecture and its context, reflecting a new spatial representation, which is an untraceable disappearance of object such as architecture. Not only that, the perception of emptiness is also an important tool for architects who possess such a tremendous power to curate how architecture can be experienced, and fulfill boundless imagination.