Transformations and Translations
November 25th, 2009One of my most recent realisations is that a recurring theme in our work is that of Transformation and Translation. The concept of generating tangible results through translation is of great interest to us. Particularly when the actual process of translation is somewhat, or even entirely, out of our control.
To illustrate my point I will use our recent project, The White House in Translation, shortlisted for the Storefront for Architecture Competition in 2008. For this piece we identified a glitch in translation between two 3D software packages. The object being exported by one package appeared entirely scrambled in the second. We were eager to exploit this translation, and built a 3D model of the existing White House to pass through the process. The result was a random, fractal interpretation of the original building.
This is a theme that we are inadvertantly revisiting in the fractal shapes we are currently developing. The minimal control over the final shape was something we had not anticipated, and if anything this inability to plan gives more interesting results.
Occassionally not knowing what will happen is a good thing.