A36

dream , underwater, flying, floating, senses , physical , dualities ,, hyperrealism, scale, sliding door, perception , architecture , humans , relate , model, moment , experience , clients , architect , shaking

As an architect I would say I am half artist and half technician but I definitely relate to an “in-love” state. And I absolutely confront the challenge of change on a daily basis. 

I see this transformation of a normal guy into a super hero coming out from that booth, but I see something else as well, which is the City of New York in the background. On one side there is this guy with the glasses and a nice costume, and then the other guy with the muscles. I see Superman and Clark Kent as two different personalities, two different persons

I find the image of Alice in Wonderland very beautiful. It could be underwater, everything is floating, no gravity. And the mirror is strange, the reflection of everything as its opposite. I recognise the rabbit and the teapot but I cannot recall the story. 

I don't recognise this image, but if you say it’s Star Trek, the only thing I remember about it is the take-off and a sliding door, there was a special architecture inside the ship. I remember a mysterious door and the possibility of entering another world, but now I think I ‘m mixing Matrix and Star Wars and memories get messed up. But there was a particular scene where everything was shaking, and this keeps popping up when I think of Star Trek. 

I can relate to that in-between situation, being between two worlds. I recognize the magic, a strange unfamiliar world and then one which is conventional. I can also relate to this feeling of flying, Superman is flying, Alice is floating, Star Trek is in outer space and they get de-materialised. I think this is the strongest impossible wish for humans. And to be able to see what is like to be in another human’s body. 

In my case, I think that I experience this a lot while dreaming.

I have very intense dreams and sometimes I think they're real and I am somewhere else. Even in places that are impossible, or places I know that they are only possible in my dream. For example, I open a door and I am right by the sea or I walk in a city I recognize that suddenly I am on another planet that I know humans have never seen. 

While creating a project in architecture sometimes I experience the same. This happens because of the models. When I see a model of a space, I am able to immediately be in that space, to immerse myself in that space. I think that this is happening to other people as well, for example with the clients; the moment there is a model on the table -even though it’s another scale, very small -people are projecting themselves in that space and they recognise it as real. Like kids with toys, the kitchen is here, so we are here and we could go there and then rest and we can have a bath. It becomes life.

I am not able to have this feeling with Metaverse technology. I think I am only able to immerse myself when I deal with physical models. Yes, it is useful for seeing things that your eye could not otherwise see, for example to see this object from very far away or very-very close. For me it is not so natural as having a physical object or the physical clothing or the physical plan or physical whatever experience. 

It becomes harder to engage all your senses and the imagination, and now I'm thinking that maybe this happens because with the 3D modeling we have a dominant visual perception. 

That’s why we call this kind of visualisation, “hyperrealism”. It's not used anymore in competitions for example. It is called like this because it’s over-real. It’s fantasy and it’s not possible anymore when it comes to realization. Sometimes you get qualities of materials that you will never see otherwise. But the problem is that this is a presentation tool for a client, reality is never like that. So, in the end, clients get usually disappointed when they see the final outcome. This is the reason I try to include other senses as smell and touch or temperature in my presentations, to challenge limitations of the mental space through senses. 

Flying is my impossible dream. Dreams and games are my devices. The goal is always to be weightless and to be able to escape. This is a dream that occurs to me in in different ways. Contrary to an idea of being suspended somewhere. If we bring it to our life, the transformation happens the moment we start breaking the limits between black and white, between dualities, the moment we step in-between. This is for me the biggest in-love experience. I decided to become an architect to be able to transform the physical world. But there are also many other fields in daily life where we transform reality, we go beyond the rules. The simplest magical object for me is a piece of paper. You can fold it, shape it, you can write on it. It’s extremely powerful.

Device: paper, dream

Transition: continuous, shaky

Interface: model, game