Hanna Park
Photo-scape
Materiality, Digital, Physical, Social media
Deconstruct and disrupt, reverse and reinvent:
New mediums of materiality allow us to go beyond physical constraints. It also gives a possibility to explore architectural originality. Therefore, challenging materiality and color between the digital and physical world can be a source for exploring architectural identity. It is almost like a way of creating new knowledge. It allows unexpected developments in the making process and ultimately gives rise to a newfound joint venture. This thesis aims to offer new insights into different phases that define layers of materiality. By investigating a large degree of unexplored resources, these layers of materiality constitute human experience and produce a divergent set of realities.
Digital renders and designs were often misapprehended as fake. Therefore, it is crucial to think about architectural reproduction with a digital footprint. Fake render needs to go real. How can we interpret digital materiality in the real world from a new point of view? It is the direction to explore: A pop-up intervention. Nowadays social media is the new word-of-mouth and has become more and more based on visual as opposed to written. It has become a way of documenting the cultural collective experience. In order to create an experience to share, physical installations with synthetic materiality have to offer something tempting, visually speaking, preferably with that selfie-friendly moment for many "photo-takers". Architecture must continue to investigate and explore its limits and potentials through a transformative and unpredictable medium in order to form experiences that are culturally productive.
Social media craves the pop-up urbanism that transforms architecture from an ordinary experiential space to a space where experience gets magnified. Shareable digital image-making has radically shaken this slow evolution of a place's relationship to its image. Shareable(instagrammable) architecture is not the same as photographing it, carrying not only its own aesthetic and globally conformed standpoints, but an urgency and need for the image to work beyond art objects and within an economy of likes, self-promotion, and social currency. Architecture is not catching up with this rapid rise of aesthetic and social expectations, and a new genre of sharable experiential architecture has been emerging. Therefore, Shareable architecture using social media can be a way to get people in this digital age.
Photo-scape will consist of elevated pavilions and urban-scaled streets with painted scapes that transcend between digital and physical characteristics. It will become a curated backdrop of space. The project will be located in Wilshire/Fairfax, the metro D purple line extension of LA, which has the potential to attract people due to its artistic surroundings. The goal is to enhance and stimulate the experience of visitors in all senses, encourage social interactions, and bring character and identity to a space. Traditional architecture usually needs to respond to multiple needs of the owner, occupants, and the general public. Instead, there is a defined need for a structure, display, enclosure, or interactive space that can be temporary, flexible, and adaptable for different age groups. By looking at object and installation design as an extension of architectural practice, it offers imaginative solutions for everyday life.
Overall View
Elevated Pavilion with Street-scape
Elevated Pavilion Detailed View
Physical Model Overall View
Physical Model Detailed View