Perspectival generation in/within the Sala della Pace: broadening the viewfield of spatialised images

It is everyday experience to look at a picture on a wall, (or on a computer screen) from a position that is out of alignment with its perspective, and then make a mental adjustment so as to allow for and ignore the distortion which results. To understand the limits and problem of this compensation it is necessary to look at works where there is an explicit attempt to relate the space of an image and the space in which the image exists. One such exemplar is the Sala della Pace, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338-40. The Sala della Pace may be of particular value today in helping us understand and evaluate the rapidly developing capacity of digital technology to represent dense visual and spatial information. Through Lorenzetti’s amalgam of multiple zones of extromissive generation within the images of the Sala della Pace, Lorenzetti‘s work suggests a potential compositional technique that subverts the reduction of spatial representation to a singular point of perspectival generation by broadening the viewfield in which to receive and construct multiple spatialised images. It is the aim of this paper to explore spatial concepts in Lorenzetti’s painting that may inform the way in which we conceptualise the spatial representation of both real and fictive space in/within images

Veranda urbanism: projecting the veranda edge onto the city

The idea of the threshold, the space held in tension between the interior and exterior, has a long-standing history in Queensland exemplified in the ubiquitous ‘Queenslander’ typology and its encircling veranda motif. Its phenomenological uniqueness mythologized by writers such as David Malouf, underpinning the conceptual and spatial organization of the architectural creations of architect’s such Brit Andresen & Peter O’Gorman, and more recently and Donovan Hill. This article explores this unique edge condition historically, examining how it has been extended into contemporary Queensland architecture through a combination of precedent study, and section drawings with accompanying text. Drawing will become the primary means of researching, recording, and understanding the veranda as a self contained building element, and as a threshold that mediates the sequence of spatial, temporal, and environmental filters from inside to out. Its emphasis will be on the technical and the experiential, based on the scale of people, at moments of either transition from inside or out, or inhabitation of the in-between. The essay will then extrapolate the implications of the veranda and threshold to consider larger typologies that result in a ‘veranda urbanism’. This ‘veranda urbanism’ that results is both historically grounded, but also projective, offering insights as to how the edges of the city might be informed transformed by this balanced critique of the technical and experiential conditions of the veranda as threshold

Review 2007: Architectural Projects

Welcome to the review of architecture at QUT for 2007. This year has been another challenging year for the discipline, which culminated in a successful accreditation review of AR48 Bachelor of Architecture in October. The National Visiting Panel (NVP) of the Architect Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA) and Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA), periodically monitors the standards of national architecture courses. We are pleased to confirm that AR48 continues to enjoy fulll accreditation for a further five years. Congratulations to all who have contributed to this success, particularly the student group who voluntarily met with the NVP, and left a favourable impression on the panel. I look forwqrd to building on the effective level of staff and student engagement as we turn our attention to takling the wide range of issues and challenges that we need to collectively address

Architecture Projects Review 2008

This year the transition into the new course continues with concurrent teaching of the first three years of study of DE40, Bachelor of Design (Architectural Studies), and fourth, fifth and sixth years of AR48, Bachelor of Architecture. The School of Design recognises the challenges that the DE40 third year are experiencing, as the trail blazers of the new course, experiencing the introduction of new approaches to architectural education at QUT. At the same time, our 4th years have been observing the final rites of AR48 units as they progress through the course, we are also advancing new ideas as we continue to plan the course transition