Gallery

Description

Architecture's ability to mediate spatial and perceptual experience has historically been tied to the inherent qualities of material form and function.

Video 1 | A-WAY | Pokeville | J. Mayer H.

However, our lives have become colored by immaterial stimuli as well. Last semester Matt Storus and Greg Tran did an exhibit which explored new digital techniques. Part focused on video game engines and on new developments in video and mixed reality; techniques that allow designers to engage in a more embodied understanding of the spaces they are designing and offer a link between intuitive experience and digital worlds.

Physical walls exist in material space, but when you look through a certain lens digital walls sync up to close the space, overlay the physical walls, and create new perceptions. It’s not about the material reality on its own and it’s not about the digital reality on its own. This project is about the mediation of these two mediums and discovering the ways that they can enrich one another. It seeks to explore the potential when the two are blurred. The video presents a technique which is applicable to architecture now as a representational technique.

As the material and digital collapse, new tools for art and architecture are created. The current incarnation allows for designed and simulated geometries projected into video of physical space with realistic light and textures. The hardware for this technology is very primitive; the Virtual reality glasses enable the user to look through a lens which overlays digital information onto what he is already seeing. like the evolution of video, photography etc the armature will get smaller and more streamlined and like anything, this technology will evolve according to historical trend.

Biography

Greg Tran is an architectural designer/film-maker who was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from the Knowlton School of Architecture in 2008 and recently won the Thesis Prize at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. By leveraging innovations in technology, media and music, he seeks to create new audiences for architecture and push the conventions of design. His work blends the surreal with the practical and focuses on undiscovered potentials for buildings and human experience.