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“I don’t find the purely virtual terribly exciting, just as in the same way, I don’t find the purely real terribly exciting. I like to see what happens when the two collide – the tensions that are created between them.”
– Bernard Tschumi
Le Frey National Studio for the Contemporary Arts, Bernard Tschumi
Architecture has actually experienced an evolution throughout history in terms of “dimension” (D). There are 4 stages, all still exist nowadays, resembling that of movies: 2D, 3D, 4D, and a 4Dx that I propose.
Architecture as (Media) “Dimension” Mediates
BOOK 2D TEXTS
SCREEN 2D TEXTS + IMAGES
FILM 3D TEXTS +IMAGES + SOUND + PLOT
CINEMA 3D VISUAL ILLUSIONS + AUDIENCE
CINEMA 4D STIMULATION OF SENSES
? 4Dx VIRTUAL SPACE + REAL BODY
The design focus of the above “Dimension” architecture is actually dimensionless in terms of real space. The space in 4Dx architecture happens in the mind (virtual space), when body senses are stimulated. The x appears when mutation occurs between the limitation in body sensations and the infinity in imagination. My concept is that architecture is not about designing real space, but designing the stimulation or mechanism that triggers the x mutation.
4Dx GENERATION:
Architecture Without Real Space
WHAT?
Lighthouse, Douh Aitken
The testing site of my design project is cultural or festive in nature, when an atmosphere is important. It may be a hotel, a (theme) park, a church etc., where weddings, banquets, celebratory events take place. It may also be a musuem, arts or exhibitory space, a cinema, or something in between, or a hybrid, where the relationship between the presenter and the receiver will be explored and developed. Even a completely new typology may result, the 4Dx, when the real human sensations and the virtual imagination and space come into mutation – the x factor.
Surface experimentation will be one major focus, for example, the facade. The type of media that architecture represents has changed over time. From book to screen, and then to film, to cinema… in these stages the facade is a key element for investigation. The facade has connection with human’s senses or minds when it is close to users, as well as when it is far away. The impact and the degree of stimulation is different for different distances, but the connection remains. The type of connection is the question, whether it is mental, visual, physical, conceptual, virtual. Besides facades, planes (vertical walls and horizontal ground) may also be sites for experiments, which have a more direct interaction with the “audience”.
WHY?
Alice Tully Hall, Elizabeth Diller The Blur, Elizabeth Diller
 
The Bubble, Elizabeth Diller “Learning from Las Vegas”, Robert Venturi
 
“Notre-Dame de Paris”, Victor Hugo Song 1, Doug Aitken
 
Pour Your Body Out, Pipilotti Rist Parc de la Villette,Bernard Tschumi
 
Glass House, James Welling Lighthouse, Doug Aitken
 
My concept of architecture as book can be illustrated in “Notre-Dame de Paris”, where Hugo expressed his idea of “Architecture is the great book of humanity”. Before the invention of printing press, architecture acted as a medium to mediate virtual texts – concepts. For architecture as screen, I will use Robert Venturi’s projects as reference, the Vanna Venturi House and his theory of “shed” and signboard architecture in “Learning from Las Vegas”. While architecture as film can be seen in Bernard Tschumi’s projects. The cinematic strip of gardens and the implementation of “Manhattan Transcript” in his Parc de la Villette shows the focus on the events instead of space, which comes naturally as a consequence. His Glass Video Gallery is a series of moving images due to reflective glass. The platform spaces on the facade of his Le Frey National Studio for the Contemporary Arts are strips of film frames of independent events. I categorize the above as 2D because of the passive relationship between architecture (presenter) and users (receiver).
While the evolution to 3D and 4D (architecture as cinema) is different, in which the audience is not isolated but involved in the design itself. The Blur by Eliazabeth Diller, its edible form, brings out her idea that “architecture is nothing but a special effects machine, that disturbs the senses”. Besides designing the stimulation of body, it also challenges the conventions of space. Its quality of space is scaleless, and there is “nothing to see or do” there. Her focus on making an active relationship between the presenter and receiver is shown in her other projects, like the reconfigurable interior of The Bubble project, the “light belt” as she described, that creates a “seamless continuity that connects the audience with performers”, in her Alice Tully Hall, as well as the Slow House which I see as a cinema where the audience walks instead of sits.
Over the past 7 years, multimedia arts has been merging with architecture, which inspires my concept of going beyond 4D – a 4Dx. Existing examples of concepts between 4D and 4Dx include Pipilotti Rist’s Pour Your Body Out in the Museum of Modern Art; Doug Aitken’s Lighthouse, and his Song 1 installation at Hirshhorn. The idea of virtuality has been put into experimentation. John Welling’s Glass House Series is a vivid example of reflections being the building materials, and the surrounding projections turn an empty space into a large structure of landscape, buildings and sculptures.
HOW?
Parc de la Villette, Bernard Tschumi
Manhattan TranscriptS, Bernard Tschumi
The Slow House, Elizabeth Diller
 
A series of experiements across “dimensions” will be carried out, to investigate principles and develop the potentials of a 4Dx media “dimension” of architecture, where real space design is not the focus, but generates a new realm of concept of space.
Step 01: Analytical table of coded archetypes of 2D, 3D and 4D, with reference to Bernard Tschumi’s table drawing of all folies in Parc de la Villette.
Step 02: Develop a set of notations, in drawings and models, to describe events and space when architecture is a “cinema” but not just “film”, when the senses of audience are stimulated. Compare and contrast these drawings or models of 3D and 4D with the 2D Manhattan Transcripts. (Test site: Facade Format: Drawing/model notations Types of medium: Light and sound)
Step 03: Develop a design with reference to the Slow House, which acts as a cinema that stimulates the five human senses, as well as human movement. (Test site: Planes Format: Drawdel Types of medium: Stimulations of the five human senses)
Step 04: Final tests, simulations of how 4Dx can perform. It can be in the format of a movie and a model.
Bibliography
Theory
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, (Hachette, 1994)
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message,” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, “A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or, Learning from Las Vegas”, Architectural Forum 128, no. 2 (March 1968), 36-43.
Denise Scott-Brown, “Learning from Pop,” Casabella 359-360 (December 1971), republished in K. Michael Hays, ed., Architecture Theory since 1968 (Cambridge:MIT Press, 2000), 440-461.
Bernard Tschumi, Interview by Yoshio Futagawa, (Tokyo, Japan: ADA Edita Tokyo, 1997)
Kevin Lynch, “The Image of the Environment”, in The Image of the City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960), 1-13.
Lynch, Kevin. What Time Is This Place? Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972.
Techniques
Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, (London: Academy Press, 1994)
Projects
Bernard Tschumi, Event-cities 2, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000)
Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture, (Princeton University Press, 2011)
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