Empty Space vs. Empty form..

The concept of "Empty Space" and "Empty form" is not the case of something that is quite clean cut. In themselves lie ambiguity and thus, explaining the ideas let alone expressing the ideas can largely depends on the individuals and the personal understanding of each person. Personally from my understanding, "Empty form" is harder to create than "Empty space", what is considered an "Empty space" is not always necessary an "Empty form".

 "Empty space" is talking more about the physicality of a particular space, as when it is seen as empty, like an abandoned building as no one inhabits it, In the order for a space to be an "Empty space" it can be seen that there's an absence of people, nevertheless, this absence is present  because an empty space has a defined "function" which in a way, "restrict" the building from being more "flexible" for other possible usage, hence, when the space is too restrictive, it can fail to survive through social or even environmental changes unlike other buildings that are more adaptive, which in a way, closer in being an "Empty form".

 One example of a building that is an empty space but not yet an empty form is "The Crown Hall" by Mies van der Rohe, The Crown Hall was designed with an intention in being an "empty form" which actually communicates multiple functions and being highly adaptive to many uses and it was well on the way in becoming an empty form as it has no previous "sign" that would tie it to a particular usage. However, as it turned out today, The Crown Hall is more or less and "Empty space" as even though the physicality of the actual space inside allows for a number of possible activities, the fact that it is so restrictive in that you can't touch the glass surface or else they'll have to replace the whole frame due to the stain you'll make or you can't stick anything on the wall except for a special kind of tape that will not ruin the surface. Hence, due to these restrictions, despite the hall, not having the "designated function" in its ultra simple form which represents the utmost flexibility and being very adaptable, this absence in the visual sign which the users would use to define the function of the space is one of the good qualities that an empty form should have. Nevertheless, due to the materiality and finishing of The Crown Hall, it limits the users from doing all those possible activities in their minds and thus, resulting in the building becoming only an "empty space" and at the same time, it can be said, a new sign is imprinted on to it, as a place for architectural students. 

 However, an empty building which is considered as an "Empty space" could becomes an "Empty form".  It can be argued whether we can create an "Empty form" or not since "Empty forms" will be determined through the usage of the space by the inhabitants. As architects, we can try to design spaces that allow itself to be used as an "Empty form", that space would have multiples interpretations and uses by the users that the physicality of it would not be the factor that defines its possible functions. In other words, if human recognizes the "sign" of each function through a kind of "physical representation" or "symbol" then an Empty form would ideally, has no "sign" that would tied it to a particular function or the signs existed would not be related to the actual functions of the space, this absence of a still, restrictive visual sign would  gives the freedom for the users to invent the new functions for the space. hence, Empty form is, in a way unpredictable in terms of how people would interact or use the space, thus, "newness" can be created through an "Empty form".

An example of  a successful empty form is the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews" by Peter Eisenman, as it's clear that despite the rather heavy concept, through the design which implies no "visual sign" that would link to the idea of death too obviously, multiple responses can be seen from the people interacting with the space, which is what Eisenman wanted. The space is so flexible and adaptive that it can house a wide range of activities and that the "visual signs" that defines its concept or functions is absence or too varied to be capture in a single shot, like a blurry photograph, the object is moved too fast and at times appeared "invisible", that is what an Empty form is, based on my understanding.

The Crown Hall has no "visual sign" that would determines its usage.

However, its many restrictions and rules prevent it from being an "Empty Form".

The Memorail to the Murdered Jews has no obvious visual signs that tied it to
 a function,thus, the users are left with the freedom to create their owns.

As a result, multiple reactions are created; walking on the blocks, sitting or even, fashion shooting

The simulation, the hypereality and “Borat”..

 Talking about the film, “Borat”, most people would somewhat heard of its name before, the film is known amongst the crowd as being funny and to some extends, outrageous. Yes, we all know that Borat is hilarious, but what actually made us laugh so much? Underneath the neon green bikini and the funny accent, the core of the humor actually lied within the way the Borat interacts with his surroundings. The way he response to the world, is different as that he is different from us; his view of the world is ought to be different…. But is he really? Well, as we may guess, Borat is a character played by the actor Sacha Boron Cohen, Borat is a news reporter from Kazakhstan, trying to make a documentary of the United States. What made the film hilarious is to see Borat’s reaction to such common thing in the American modern life, since Borat is from Kazakhstan; all of his perceptions and understanding are based from his cultural background. Well, we entirely believe in this character when actually Borat doesn’t resemble much of the real Kazakhstan and the people at all, the whole “tradition” and the image of Borat’s Kazakhstan has been created entirely in this film, hence why the country’s response was furious. However, as the audience, we couldn’t care less about the fact that the image being portrayed as a developing, nuclear filled, polluted nation is actually pure creation because for us, it seems too real. With every details during the scene, we linked this image of Borat’s Kazakhstan with images of the developing part of eastern Europe and Russia and hence, due to the fact that not much people actually know Kazakhstan prior to the release of the film, we believe in the image being shown, honestly, I actually believed that the scene in Kazakhstan was real, while in fact, as I realized later, the villagers, the chickens and donkeys were all staged. Hence, this firstly introduced us to the idea of simulation, where the idea of “pretending” goes beyond just wearing a mask but actually being the character, having the real symptoms, as a result, a simulation is much more effective into making people really believe in it.

Borat and his version of Kazakhstan

Moreover, as we believed in the recreational Kazakhstan, the character of Borat is much more real to us, in fact, just like the country, Borat himself is a simulation. Hence, there were moments during the film where it appeared to be real, despite the fact that some parts were more likely to be staged, we would still believe in it, since the characters and even the settings were simulations. As a result, Borat was successful in being funny as it was able to transform itself, from a film to a “documentary” through the realistic details in the scenes and in the characters. Thus when we entirely believe in the character of Borat as a real person, everything he did had much more impact as we feel that it was so truthful and original. Hence, that is why, personally I think Borat is funny, the fact that it was able to exaggerated some humorous with the innocence and honesty of the character as he seems so real.

Actual Kazakhs wearing their traditional costume
- can you see any relation to what’s portrayed in Borat?

The city of Aktau, Kazakhstan

Another aspect of Borat that made it funny was the fact that, in many times, the funny parts were quite unexpected, despite the mundane, ordinary situations, Borat’s responses often came to us as a surprise, as we are so used to the modern culture that we didn’t expect such reactions from the character. Thus, we laughed at his way of thinking and his reactions to American culture, as we never thought of such responses before. To add more, those funny-moments are often situations where we all could relates to, combined with such well simulation by the character, the whole scene or even the whole film was able to make us believe that it was real.

To sum up, Borat might not be the most successful film, it has its own issues just like any other films but when looking at the humorous aspect, we have to admit that it had done a reasonably good job and I think that the main reason that we find the film funny is not because of the obvious things on the surface but more or so the reality and the believability of the film. Borat himself wouldn’t be as funny if he lacks that “truthfulness” and “honesty” which pushed him beyond the boundary of just “acting” to becoming a kind of a “simulation”, and that simulation is what created more impact on us, as it blurred the deceptive boundary of acting, which as a result, made us believe and relates to the film even more.  

Semiotics and the process of Translation

The architectural “signs”…. And signs in general…

What are signs?, this seemingly simple word that symbolizes a symbols in which used for representing a particular object seems physically easy to understand, yet, in the world of architectural theory, the notion of signs actually raises a lot of questions and strangely relates to many ways, we humans interact with the surroundings. Firstly, “signs are always referring to something seemingly real”, hence, the signs for a dog would be different from the actual dog and that “dog” would also be different when interpreted by different people based on their personal experiences.  Also, each signs have different effects on us that link to our personal judgments and emotions, for instance, when the first caveman discovered the first “shelter”, or as we know, the cave, he relates this unknown space with shelter, safety and warmth, thus, this is passed on to others, and the “cave” became a “sign” that relates to shelter and feeling of comfort. Moreover, the signs that each of us perceived today is actually interpretation of someone’s else understanding, and with that, we will also create our own image and understanding. Signs can be categorizes into three groups; icon – a sign that looks similar for what it stands for, eg. The Buddha sculpture. Symbols – a sign that doesn’t necessary look like what it stands for, but is understand from our society and experiences such as the Christian Cross. Lastly, the Index sign – it communicates to us through being a part of a process that we can imagine such as a bullet through a wall would communicates gun fired. Interestingly, we can see some artists and architects applying the theory of the sign into their building; in one of Mies building in Chicago, he uses the steel truss to stick onto the façade of his tower, not as a structural aid but as a kind of a “sign” that referring to the steel that is hidden underneath the concrete due to Chicago’s fire law. Thus, I see this as a way that Mies expresses himself and declared his signature to the world despite these trusses not having any function at all.  

From the class discussion, I feel that signs are so often used that we are often forgotten the simple truth that the signs and the objects are actually two different things, this is proved when we claimed that the image of a pipe is a “pipe” while the truth is that “it is not a pipe, but a painting f a pipe”. However, some signs are used to the extend of becoming its own “object” rather than the object that it is representing, a sign of a house is so widely used to the point that, most of us would recognize the simple “pentagon” in representing a “house”, in one way, I feel that this is the success of the sign, yet, because of this fact, designers are trying to “de-signs” their works, to de-sign is to removing the sign, which are quite common, making the outcome more unique and “new”. MURDV, is one of the well known architectural company that actually play with the theory of the signs quite well as they uses the process of “translation” to play with the new composition and create “newness” without entirely loosing the essence of the “sign”. Thus, the process used to arrive at this new form actually has logical reasons, through using the translation of form, it create a new transformed form that can be used which would deconstruct the common / generic semiotic and hopefully create a new “sign” of its own.

Overall, I was quite impressed with this session and the topic of “sign” as I think that it relates to most of us de-signers. Also, it sparks a controversial idea that if what we’re learning is also an “interpretation”, “the sign” of the ajarn, then is there anypoint in reading the texts themselves? As seen in the Phaedrus text that, rather than reading the book, Socrates suggests that he would rather “hear” it, this implies that the “interpretation” is more interesting, and valuable than the book itself. However, as I came into realization, because of this very fact that everything, every “signs” today are interpretation from someone’s else, to get to the core, we must de-sign those signs, and the only way to do this, is to try to go back to the original and try to interpret it by our understanding. Once we have our own interpretation, we can use the process of “translation” to transform, to deconstruct the object, which hopefully, will lead to the arrival of the new, unique de-sign. 

Phenomenology and the studio project

The concept of Phenomenology in our sculpture pavilion project.

Phenomenology  in simpler  word is the study of essences, such essences  are actually responsible for giving us the "effect" that we can often feel when we enter a space or a setting.  Such effect mentioned in the previous reading was the sublime, which translated into a concept of a "delightful horror", such as the joy from surviving from a near-death experience for instance. The interesting aspect of the similar idea of phenomenology can be seen in the work of the architect; Alexander Brodsky's ice pavilion, where he uses the existing surrounding to his advantage by creating the walls of the building from the frozen water of the lake in which the pavilion was located on. This made his pavilion much more interesting as he had "surrendered" to the surrounding while most building tried to withstand the natural forces. As a result his ice pavilion has many appearances as the ice on the wall keep on melting according to the weather and the amount of heat dissipated from the bodies of the customers, thus, not only that Brodsky has found a way for his building  to exist in harmony with the environment, he also added an ever-changing facades and an ephemeral quality which, overall, gives us even more impact.

Most architects would have to adapt their buildings to the context of the site to some level, in a functional term, however, the concept of "surrendering" to the environment is hardly ever discussed and is a much more conceptual and abstract topic. Thus, we were encourage to further investigate into our pavilion project, where we have to design a pavilion to house 10 sculptures in a given site, my site is located at parc paragon, an empty space that lies in between Siam center and Siam Paragon shopping mall in central Bangkok.  My concept of the journey through the exhibition talks about human's greed and selfishness in contrast to the fact that we are still relying in nature and that we should be able to realize this and start looking into ourselves to find our flaws, as a result, we will eventually learn to care more about others and hopefully become less selfish.  There are many aspect of my pavilion that sort of reminded me of the "sublime" effect, although not entirely, this similar idea could definitely be applied or emphasize in future works for the more "full-on" impact. One of the main features of my design is that the external wall of my pavilion is all louvers, however, they are aligned to follow the curves of the building, which was inspired by the circulation of the pedestrians.  Moreover, these louvers are not open at the same angle, the ones at both ends of the pavilion would opened up to the outside, while moving inward, more into the exhibition, the louvers gradually become closer in the space between each other and also the angle is more enclosed. This effect is thought put to be in accordance to the order of the display sculptures, where the most enclosed space would be for the sculpture that about selfishness, this expressed the nature that we all have this side, but often try to cover and hide it. using the louvers also give the effect of repetition, and at some angle inside, it looks as if the louvers is infinite. Thus, this passively suggest the idea of the sublime that can be adapted or emphasis in future works. Furthermore, as I mentioned before, the louvers are not spaced in a regular spacing, but they become denser and denser. The spacing around the entrances area are large enough for people to walk through , hence this was done on purpose and I didn't want to interrupt the flow of circulation in the area too much but still encourage people to experience the architecture. The idea is that, people would walked through/across the pavilion without much struggle, however, they will arrived in the interior space at a point, which is sort of like a carved out space that is enclosed by the aligned louvers, such encounter would be a little unexpected and thus, this gives a chance for the sculptures to seduce the passerby's attention . Hence, the audience, can choose to venture into the unknown space, so close and connected to the outside, yet through the separation of the thin louvers, became another strange, alluring new space, or of course, they can walked straight out  and get on with their businesses if they choose to. More over despite the organic free form of the pavilion, the form was actually inspired by the way people move across the site. Thus, I see this as a passive attempt to blend in and somewhat, surrendered to the existing environment/condition of the give site. By no means, that I'm confident that I'm doing all of these things for the "impact" or "effect" or the "sublime", nevertheless, this is what I can extracted from my existing pavilion which was designed prior to the time where the concept of "phenomenology" was introduced during the theory class.