Critical Surface Hotel

Operations

Technique

Analog Model

Cody Davis. Knowlton School of Architecture. The Ohio State University

4th Year Studio Critic: Gabriel Esquivel.

The goal of the “critical surfaces” is to create a point of departure into “performance surfaces” to give insight into the role of digital media in architecture that goes beyond its use for representation and to give a better understanding of the full implications that the incorporation of digital media has for architecture in the broadest sense. The purpose was to address specific ways in which experimental architects make use of digital media, what effects this has on architectural production and architectural form, and how this relates to today’s rapid and complex cultural transformations. The purpose was to address specific ways in which experimental architects make use of digital media, what effects this has on architectural production and architectural form, and how this relates to today’s rapid and complex cultural transformations, moving into the territory of the emotive.

The technique was to start with an image as a new diagram, interpret the image in different ways looking for conditions of motion, the image selected here was the opening credits for the movie “North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock. After this drawing study an analog model was built in which three different material systems would interact two hard and one soft. Through a series of photographs with different types of lighting, a series of effects were produced that were used a starting point for the production of specific affects.

The next step was to begin an analog investigation of effect and technique, then the investigation of digital techniques into an architectural precedent. Using poché as the architectural subject of investigation.

The decision was made to interact with an existing building, the chosen building was Hotel Crozat in the Place Vendôme in Paris, the point where the technique would be reapplied was using the poché as the irregularity or as the possibility for figuration. The production of a series of surfaces from the poché was how this project was developed; a new interpretation of the hotel using a digital technique. The quest after that step was to develop an atmosphere using the effects that were studied during the analog phase. By looking at the photographic effects we began to look into an atmosphere that incorporated new possibilities for inhabitation for hotels wher the surface becomes not only performative but also emotional where the hard and soft surfaces could interact producing a specific continuity.