Design Strategies for Reimagining the City: The Disruptive Image

191 Pages·2022·10.391 MB·English

by  Linda Matthews

Design Strategies for Reimagining
the City
Design Strategies for Reimagining the City is situated between projective
geometry, optical science and architectural design. It draws together
seemingly unrelated fields in a series of new digital design tools and
techniques underpinned by tested prototypes.
The book reveals how the relationship between architectural design and
the ubiquitous urban camera can be used to question established structures
of control and ownership inherent within the visual model of the Western
canon. Using key moments from the broad trajectory of historical and
contemporary representational mechanisms and techniques, it describes the
image’s impact on city form from the inception of linear perspective geometry
to the digital turn. The discussion draws upon combined fields of digital
geometry, the pictorial adaptation of human optical cues of colour brightness
and shape, and modern image-capture technology (webcams, mobile phones
and UAVs) to demonstrate how the permeation of contemporary urban space
by digital networks calls for new architectural design tools and techniques. A
series of speculative drawings and architectural interventions that apply the
new design tools and techniques complete the book.
Aimed at researchers, academics and upper-level students in digital
design and theory, it makes a timely contribution to the ongoing and
broadly debated relationship between representation and architecture.
Linda Matthews is the Co-director of the UTS Visualisation Institute and a
Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology,
Sydney. Her research interests draw upon the history, politics and techniques
of representation to explore new architectural and urban design methodol-
ogies that utilise the optics of digital visioning systems. The research aims to
use virtual urban spaces as a source of qualitative and quantitative data to
generate non-traditional modes of architectural and urban form. Linda has
won several significant academic awards, including the prestigious Design
Medal from the NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects
and the University Medal from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Routledge Research in Architecture
The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the
latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research from
across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory,
technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, mono-
graphs of architects, interior design and much more. By making these studies
available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote
quality architectural research.
Radical Functionalism
A Social Architecture for Mexico
Luis E. Carranza
The Architect and the Academy
Essays on Research and Environment
Dean Hawkes
Architecture of Threshold Spaces
A Critique of the Ideologies of Hyperconnectivity and Segregation in the Socio-
Political Context
Laurence Kimmel
Pyrotechnic Cities
Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation
Liam Ross
Architecture and the Housing Question
Edited by Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim
Architecture and the Housing Question
Edited by Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim
Mies at Home
From Am Karlsbad to the Tugendhat House
Xiangnan Xiong
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Architecture/book-series/RRARCH
Design Strategies for
Reimagining the City
The Disruptive Image
Linda Matthews
Cover image: Bill Kopitz/Lower Manhattan at Night/Getty
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Linda Matthews
The right of Linda Matthews to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Matthews, Linda (Linda M.), author.
Title: Design strategies for reimagining the city : the disruptive
image / Linda Matthews.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge
research in architecture | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021061465 (print) | LCCN 2021061466 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367680176 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367680183
(paperback) | ISBN 9781003133872 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and technology. |
Architectural design‐‐Data processing.
Classification: LCC NA2543.T43 M38 2022 (print) | LCC
NA2543.T43 (ebook) | DDC 711/.40285‐‐dc23/eng/20220210
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061465
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061466
ISBN: 978-0-367-68017-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-68018-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13387-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003133872
Typeset in Sabon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables xii
List of abbreviations xiii
Acknowledgement xiv
PART I
Constructed fields of vision 1
Introduction 3
1 The problem of the image of the city: From perspectival
to digital space 8
Disruptive techniques of spatial representation 8
Singular or narrative spaces of representation 10
The ‘symbolic’ intent of linear perspective geometry 10
The perspectival city 11
Photography as the bearer of truth 12
Fragmentary spaces of representation 15
Anamorphosis and the reversal of logic 15
The Vertovian image: Issues of critique, representation
and form-making 16
Filmic space/architectural space 18
Vertov in the digital image: Envisioning the
contemporary city 19
The qualitative image and affective space 22
2 The pixel’s visual territory 28
From analogue to digital 28
Unique modes of digital assembly 30
vi Contents
The discontinuous digital line 30
Qualitative content is connected data 31
The predictability of pixel relationships 32
Digital geometry’s intersection with optical science 33
Perceptual behaviours 33
The digital mediation of colour, brightness and shape 35
Technological disruption 35
Digital colour: Unique translations of digital
technology 36
Contrast perception, luminosity and the contextual
advantages of pixel geometry 38
Form perception and the inherent imperatives
of pixel geometry 40
Representation and the pixel’s ‘symbolic form’ 41
Many authors 41
3 Seeing through digital image-making technology 46
Colour’s transformation 46
Colour as form 47
The digital manipulation of colour 50
Proprietary colour 50
Colour by guesswork 52
New digital opportunities 53
Non-proprietary colour and open-source code 53
Exploiting CFAs 54
The digital perception of brightness 55
Shifting the register: The pictorial application of
brightness 55
Eliminating the uncontrollable: Brightness as an
artefact 58
Fraunhofer diffraction as a productive aberration 59
Digital image legibility: Shape 60
The human perception of shape 60
The human visual system and scan path theory 61
Saliency and the advantages of webcam technology 65
The productive inclusion of digital artefacts 67
4 The new agency of distributed digital networks 74
Digital anamorphosis and the virtual picture plane 74
Pre-digital anamorphic techniques 74
The affective anamorphic network 76
Contents vii
Digital anamorphic techniques 77
The expanded image 80
The distributed network and the multiplication of
viewpoints 80
An expanded temporal frame 84
Responding to the digital city 86
PART II
New techniques of intervention and disruption 91
5 Generative techniques 93
New modes of practice 93
The qualitative image 95
The space within the image 98
The anamorphic potential of digital technology 98
The dynamic image 103
The image as a 3D volume 103
The synthesised landscape 106
Transdisciplinary modes of activating digital colour and
luminance (brightness) 106
Colour and luminance (brightness) profiles as a
generative procedure 108
Conclusion 110
6 The building surface as a colour modifier 113
Design templates for the built surface 113
Test strategies 114
Colour 114
Image artefacts 114
Attention tracking 114
Validation methods 115
Series 1 tests overview 116
Test part 1: Strategies of pattern hierarchy 117
Test technical data and conditions 119
Test analysis methodology 120
Test results 120
Test summary and conclusions 121
Test part 2: Hierarchies of visibility – the shifting function
of luminosity (brightness) 122
Test results 122
viii Contents
Test summary and conclusions 123
Test part 3: The disruptive potential of additive colour 123
Test technical data and conditions 124
Test results and analysis 125
Test summary and conclusions 121
The data matrix 125
7 Re-viewing diffraction 130
Series 2 tests overview 130
Patterns of disruption 132
Test technical data and conditions 132
Test analysis methodology 133
Test results and analysis 134
Test summary, conclusions and the data matrix 135
8 New readings of the city 137
Series 3 tests overview 137
Scanning variants 138
Test technical data and conditions 138
Test analysis methodology 140
Test results and analysis 140
Test summary, conclusions and the data matrix 142
Concluding comments on the test series and the
data matrices 144
9 ‘La città ideale’: Design drawings for the digital city 147
The digital Urbino Panel 147
Preliminary digital site mapping procedures 148
The digital Urbino Panel: A summary of visual effects 148
Intervention 1 150
Intervention 2 151
Intervention 3 152
Conclusion 156
The new tools and techniques of architecture 156
The disciplinary shift 158
Glossary 160
Bibliography 162
Index 171
Figures
2.1 Image of Bondi Beach, Australia, generated in PixelMath
software. The image shows the distinct edges and the RGB
value of each pixel 39
3.1 Antonio da Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin,
1526–1530 57
3.2 Piero della Francesca, Annunciation (St Anthony),
1460–1470 64
4.1 Michelangelo Buonarotti, The Last Supper (1536–1541) 75
5.1 Digital glitch broadcasting error blue pixel noise
([golubovy]/Depositphotos.com) (left). Close-up of a
section of the transmission error showing RGB pixel
values of the artefact (right). (Image by author) 96
5.2 Emmanuel Maignan’s fresco San Francesco di Paola
(1642) in Trinità dei Monti, Rome, showing distorted
image when viewed from frontal position (top left), image
when viewed from ‘correct’ oblique viewing position (top
right) and micro-landscapes embedded within the larger
image visible from a viewing position perpendicular to the
image surface (bottom). (Image by author) 100
5.3 Stationary camera viewpoints near Customs House,
Circular Quay, Sydney (top left); catoptric anamorphic
image generated from the same viewpoints (top right);
Catoptric cylindrical anamorphic projections of Customs
House, Circular Quay, Sydney, showing anamorphic
projections, and ‘corrected’ Cartesian arrays in the
reflective surface of the cylinder (bottom images). (Image
by author) 102
5.4 Rotated time-lapse image stack (top left), intersecting
orthogonal slice (top right) and conflated projection of
an image stack along z axis (bottom) showing a view of
Broadway looking towards Times Square, New York 104