In praise of orthographic projections:Cinematic plans, history and application

This article offers insights for architectural and design educators that teach emerging cinematic and filmmaking practices. Due to its interdisciplinary nature and its practice-based methodology, this article presents the research, pedagogy and practice for educators in the field of architecture and spatial design as well as other creative disciplines such as film, animation and digital media. The argument is substantiated by empirical observations and qualitative analysis of student filmmaking projects and first-hand experiments in a design studio environment. Direct observations made from experiments in a design studio environment in which more than 50 students were trained and numerous internationally awarded architectural films and animations were produced. The research outcomes illustrate how traditional orthographic drawing techniques can operate as highly useful instruments in the process of designing narrative pieces of digital media, animation and film about architectural projects. The pedagogical approach has the potential to have implications on the discourse, practice and pedagogy of the emerging common ground between architecture, spatial design principles, digital media and filmmaking

The architecture of the video game Stray (2022): the feline quadruped cyberpunk player

The twenty-first century was marked by emerging ways of space- and place-making. The architecture of the virtual environments of video games is one of the alternative practices in which the discipline of architecture got involved. This essay looks at the architecture and spatial storytelling in the videogame Stray (2022). The relevance of studying Stray does not lie only in the game’s enigmatic interiors, rigorous space-oriented narrative, unique patchwork of neon-soaked, post-apocalyptic labyrinthine spaces, or the cyberpunk Kowloon-like ghettoised urban environment in which the game takes place; Stray is an unprecedented case study as its gameplay is narrated through a non-human perspective: through the point of view of a cat accompanied by a small flying robot called B 12. This essay provides a critical review of the game and attempts to dissect how the spatial storytelling of its post/non-human architecture is orchestrated. Spatial puzzle mechanics, the fluctuation of the game between urban, architectural, and interior scales, and the role that platforms and vertical design techniques play are the subjects of the article. The challenges of the interaction of a game character with four legs with spatial elements, video game placemaking, and spatial design of fetch quests are other topics that the essay will look into. The article is supported by comments from an unpublished interview with Viv (one of the developers of the game) and a series of detailed analytical drawings from the reconstruction of the game environments by the authors

The architecture of film: Tarr, angelopoulos and how to ride a wild horse

© 2020 Hamid Amouzad KhaliliWith the dawn of moving images, architects started to develop an interest in studying and utilizing film for theorizing, critiquing and representing architecture. In recent years, a myriad of books and academic papers by architectural theorists have been published around the strong relationship between architecture and film. Simultaneously, leading architecture schools established subjects concerning the two interlocking arts, some academics dedicated their research career to studying the relationship between film and architecture, post-graduate degrees on film and architecture were devised and architects and architecture students have been involved in a significant trend toward creating architectural animations and film. However, despite the advances of digital filming and editing and its availability to the public, sophisticated technologies of lighting, modeling, simulation and texturing in CGI programs used by architecture students, architectural films and animations commonly present certain shared symptoms such as fast and disturbing camera movements, aimless editing, weak compositions and narrative-less montages. These symptoms reveal an unfortunate truth that architects still do not know how to use the moving images effectively, and this knowledge has yet to be successfully transferred to the discipline of architecture. This dissertation traces the roots of this challenge and tackles it in a series of research activities. This thesis proposes a toolbox named the ‘film-architecture matrix’ that can be used as a matrix of film design and analysis. Within the thesis, this film-architecture matrix is employed as an analytical tool in three chapters. The dissertation puts forward a pedagogical framework for teaching filmmaking to architects and utilizes the film-architecture matrix as the main design generator. In addition, this dissertation takes on the task of presenting and critically examining the two filmmakers, Bela Tarr and Theo Angelopoulos to architectural discourse. It is argued that the cinema of Tarr and Angelopoulos, and the cinematic movement represented by them known as ‘slow cinema’, entails certain features that make them useful studies to the field of architecture and can influence the quality of architectural films and animations, and the discipline of architecture in a broader sense