Monday, January 24, 2011
The Site: Battleship Island
First pass at the concept art for Hashima Island, also known as Battleship Island. Note the ghostly faces on the exterior top facets of the buildings. Still working on the idea of the body being fragmented. In order to portray fragmentation of the site, I may need to work in terms of form and interior sections. The ocean sinkhole idea came from a natural wonder, known as the Cave of Swallows.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Behind the Veil
Life can be seen as multiple layers of reality and meaning. This is true in existential psychology; our human perception and experience is grounded on a sense of stability--meaning is attached to our relationship with people (Mitwelt), life-long goals, and attachment with the built environment. We cover our worries through many layers of meaning that is difficult to penetrate. What we hold dear, true, and close to our hearts is something that we do not wish to lose upon certain death.
"Nothingness" is what we humans truly fear. The effects attributed to a causal form, a feeling of unease can destroy the many layers of meaning that we experience in everyday life. The sensation of floating endlessly in the void is horrifying enough; to simply not exist, is incomprehensible. However, in all this doom and gloom, there is always the human need for companionship. To force an individual to die alone, is the worst thing you can do to a human being. Death in the midst of friends, family, or a significant other is a last desperate attempt to hold on to meaning. With meaning, there is stability, and with it, there is a sense of hope.
"Nothingness" is what we humans truly fear. The effects attributed to a causal form, a feeling of unease can destroy the many layers of meaning that we experience in everyday life. The sensation of floating endlessly in the void is horrifying enough; to simply not exist, is incomprehensible. However, in all this doom and gloom, there is always the human need for companionship. To force an individual to die alone, is the worst thing you can do to a human being. Death in the midst of friends, family, or a significant other is a last desperate attempt to hold on to meaning. With meaning, there is stability, and with it, there is a sense of hope.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
In the year...
The Cenotaph
In the year 2030, an artifact was found on Hashima Island located off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. The artifact, known as the Cenotaph, dates back approximately 1500 B.C. Scientists have found inconclusive evidence regarding its origins, who built it and why. However, one thing is clear: the civilization that built it was technologically advanced, centuries ahead of our own modern technology. In 2043, more than a decade after the Cenotaph’s discovery, Project Eidolon was born.
Project Eidolon
Project Eidolon is a means for the Puppeteers to act on their own ideological imperatives. The Project involves transcending the physical world through advanced machines, known as ECT-Types (Experimental Cairn Two). Using the original Cenotaph as a model, scientists were able to create modern variants with a limited degree of success. Baring a close resemblance to a sepulcher, users of these ECT-Types were able to transcend their consciousness into an existential world called Mitwelt. In other words, ECT-Type users were capable of exploring the physical world outside of their bodies in a ghost-like state. Upon waking, their memories were downloaded into the ECT-Type’s storage banks for analysis. Unlike the original Cenotaph, ECT-Types did not imbue the user access to the Uberwelt, the spiritual world. Users were normally found between the ages of 15 to 25. This favorable age group was used to compensate for undesirable effects from using the ECT-Types, such as high stress and rapid aging.
Click for larger image
The Puppeteers
The Puppeteers were a secretive, loose organization of individuals involved in buying and selling information to national governments. Their real intent was to sow distrust amongst the United Nation’s members, provoke proxy wars, and deny large national governments, such as the U.S., China, and Russia from forming a world government. By manipulating the interests of national governments, the Puppeteers were able to maintain their belief in the status quo and idiom: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Eidolon Project was a means of maintaining this ideology throughout the latter half of the 21st Century.
In the year 2030, an artifact was found on Hashima Island located off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. The artifact, known as the Cenotaph, dates back approximately 1500 B.C. Scientists have found inconclusive evidence regarding its origins, who built it and why. However, one thing is clear: the civilization that built it was technologically advanced, centuries ahead of our own modern technology. In 2043, more than a decade after the Cenotaph’s discovery, Project Eidolon was born.
Project Eidolon
Project Eidolon is a means for the Puppeteers to act on their own ideological imperatives. The Project involves transcending the physical world through advanced machines, known as ECT-Types (Experimental Cairn Two). Using the original Cenotaph as a model, scientists were able to create modern variants with a limited degree of success. Baring a close resemblance to a sepulcher, users of these ECT-Types were able to transcend their consciousness into an existential world called Mitwelt. In other words, ECT-Type users were capable of exploring the physical world outside of their bodies in a ghost-like state. Upon waking, their memories were downloaded into the ECT-Type’s storage banks for analysis. Unlike the original Cenotaph, ECT-Types did not imbue the user access to the Uberwelt, the spiritual world. Users were normally found between the ages of 15 to 25. This favorable age group was used to compensate for undesirable effects from using the ECT-Types, such as high stress and rapid aging.
Click for larger image
The Puppeteers
The Puppeteers were a secretive, loose organization of individuals involved in buying and selling information to national governments. Their real intent was to sow distrust amongst the United Nation’s members, provoke proxy wars, and deny large national governments, such as the U.S., China, and Russia from forming a world government. By manipulating the interests of national governments, the Puppeteers were able to maintain their belief in the status quo and idiom: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Eidolon Project was a means of maintaining this ideology throughout the latter half of the 21st Century.
Thesis
Individuals identify their sense of place through memory and reading architecture’s constituent parts. There is a sense of comfort established between the individual and their relationship with the built environment. The individual identifies with architecture and becomes familiarized with its symbolic qualities. However, the level of comfort becomes de-sensitized by modern architectural aesthetics. These aesthetics, represented by standardization, lack of decorative elements, and timelessness, are inimical effects. This thesis is intended to disrupt modernity’s oppressive qualities. The Eidolon Mausoleum, located on Hashima Island, intends to explore the concept of the uncanny through acts of de-familiarization. Its uncanny qualities will seek to disrupt modernity’s effects, and promote the sublime within the viewer’s imagination.
Project Brief
Architectural precedents in the past two centuries have designed uncanny architectural qualities using various techniques. Entienne-Louis Bouillee’s illustration of the cenotaph is an example of scale; its sheer size, hollow interior, and intense height, are qualities that demand awe from the viewer.
Anthony Vidler’s Architectural Uncanny, describes the classical use of anthropormophic forms in Renaissance architecture. Classical architecture like Giorgio Vasari’s Italian grotto (cave), built in the 16th Century and located in the Boboli Gardens, is another example of an architectural aesthetic; its sculpted figures and uncanny level of detail envelopes a person’s confined gaze. The panoramic scenery of the Italian countryside communicates familiarization through a narrative, yet de-familiarized through sculpted forms. The aesthetic quality of sculpting, seen in the highly detailed figures of trees and people, evokes a sense of uneasiness.
An act of procession is no better experienced than the Igualada Cemetery. Built by Enric Mirailles and Carme Pinos, and located in Spain, the site invigorates personal memory. The context of death and sacrifice is made apparent by scattered planks and recessed coffins in the walls of the entire complex. All three projects are uncanny, architectural works of art. Together, they represent techniques necessary to create an uncanny architecture through scale, form, and procession.
The Eidolon Mausoleum, located on Hashima Island, intends to explore the concept of the uncanny through acts of de-familiarization. The techniques used will include folding, digging, sculpting, photography, and most importantly, camouflage, as means of disrupting the island’s battleship-like silhouette. Its original infrastructure, represented by abandoned residential buildings and prison, will be renovated and modified to suit the needs of the program. Buried underneath lies multiple levels configured from the original prison. They will be used to emphasize procession as a type of qualitative experience. A visitor is meant to experience the abyssal qualities of the site, as if descending into hell.
Anthony Vidler’s Architectural Uncanny, describes the classical use of anthropormophic forms in Renaissance architecture. Classical architecture like Giorgio Vasari’s Italian grotto (cave), built in the 16th Century and located in the Boboli Gardens, is another example of an architectural aesthetic; its sculpted figures and uncanny level of detail envelopes a person’s confined gaze. The panoramic scenery of the Italian countryside communicates familiarization through a narrative, yet de-familiarized through sculpted forms. The aesthetic quality of sculpting, seen in the highly detailed figures of trees and people, evokes a sense of uneasiness.
An act of procession is no better experienced than the Igualada Cemetery. Built by Enric Mirailles and Carme Pinos, and located in Spain, the site invigorates personal memory. The context of death and sacrifice is made apparent by scattered planks and recessed coffins in the walls of the entire complex. All three projects are uncanny, architectural works of art. Together, they represent techniques necessary to create an uncanny architecture through scale, form, and procession.
The Eidolon Mausoleum, located on Hashima Island, intends to explore the concept of the uncanny through acts of de-familiarization. The techniques used will include folding, digging, sculpting, photography, and most importantly, camouflage, as means of disrupting the island’s battleship-like silhouette. Its original infrastructure, represented by abandoned residential buildings and prison, will be renovated and modified to suit the needs of the program. Buried underneath lies multiple levels configured from the original prison. They will be used to emphasize procession as a type of qualitative experience. A visitor is meant to experience the abyssal qualities of the site, as if descending into hell.
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