Immersive Bodies

Immersive Bodies

Architecture as Performance investigates the interaction between human and architecture: bringing architecture to life and expanding communication and exchange between architecture and its inhabitants.

Architecture as Performance emphasizes on the idea of participation and activation, symmetry and alignment, and sacred and spiritual experience through the intricate and reciprocal relationship between human and architecture. The activation of the performance occurs when people participate and engage with the architecture as the it responds back in symbiosis. Multiple agents, from various people and social groups in the site to the architectural space itself, come together correspondingly to produce a truly immersive experience.

Immersive Bodies turn a chaotic street intersection into an immersive living organ.

Immersive Bodies take on ideals of the Gothic architecture with its great scale and captivating space reaching towards the heavens with its overwhelming height and sounds, as well as High-Tech architecture with its expressed structure revealing the internal parts of the building.

Updates

3D Model Update

The creation working as a living organism/instrument breathes in air from the city's infrastructure (water mains) and exhales through a system of pipes branching out from the central altar. Nourishing its life are the people and vehicles that pass through its body. As it breathes, water rises up and down the main pillars helping maintain constant air pressure inside its body. As people and vehicles pass through each of the paths, it responds and speaks back through a variety of organ pipes. The tone and intensity of the responses act reciprocally with its activation through participation and interaction of various actors.

Adapting from the systems of organ pipes used in religious ceremonies, the creation utilizes air pressure (gained through pressure in the water mains running through the site) to power its operations. The regulator applies the system of the Greek hydraulis uses water pressure to maintain constant air pressure. The air then travels to the windchest which are located on top of the "altar piece" within the pointed arches. The "keys" of the organ located on the ground are activated as people exert pressure onto them. (The more pople, the more keys are pressed the fuller and louder the sound.) As the keys are pressed, the air pressure travels through the pipes to open valves letting air out from the mouths of the pipes filling the atmosphere with sounds.

Test Renders

*Note: Elements of the surrounding buildings are removed for faster render time

The High Altar: bottom part contains the water, top part contains the air
View from Lyndhurst Terrace (car approach)

Actor Taxonomy

The creation seeks to bring together diverse agents to form a complex harmonious network. The main actors includeparticipation and activation of different agents (persons that are aware and unaware), controlled sequence (procession) leading up to the "climax," and symmetry and alignment (visually and acoustically) in disorder and complication. Elements involved in the creation consists of sound produced by air (as in the pipe organ) and light (using openings and material to investigate light and shadow). Together these multiple elements work together in a coordinated system to perform religious rituals and ceremonies for believers and provide an experiential and interactive space for others.

Pipe Organ Taxonomy