Abstract:
A crucial part of architecture: Time and Space. But think about it, how is it being interpreted through architectural mediums? Time and space are an inseparable pair, you cannot have one without the other. However, in current architecture, time is slowly being disregarded while space continues to be considered as a necessary aspect. Architectural drawings such as plans, sections and axonometrics are useful to show the spatial qualities of the design, but as it also represents just one frame of time, the reader cannot grasp the time quality of the project. Architecture is about where it takes place in time and space. If the space is able to be represented through these drawings, but the events that will take place cannot, how can these same drawings show the architecture in full, successfully? These drawings, although conventional and useful, are not completely practical. The notations of measurements and structures are important for the built realm. However, the consideration of what happens inside is ignored, namely, time. Lacking in the dimension of time, it has potential to feed from other medias of art such as music and cinema, to start capturing time as well as space. As the art form cubism emerged, the orthodox method of painting in one viewpoint was broken. Not only did this break convention in art, but it was to influence music and cinematography in the future, to capture time as an entirety and not just a single frame. Although expressing time through art, music and cinema is comparatively easy, it is possible to approach integrating time into architecture through these medias where methods have already been established. I explore all three as an instrument to help demonstrate this idea. In particular, the camera technique of long take is successful in capturing a scene. Unlike montage where multiples of scenes, shot in one angle and in one still frame, are edited together to create a moment, long take is able to express real reality. A long take scene shows reality as it is seen and heard, in the present time. Instead of dividing a moment into two different scenes, a long take shot simultaneously places attention and details on all movements of the moment. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s uses this technique in an alternative way to a traditional long take, particularly successfully in his movie, Children of Men, to direct the audience to sense real time through the narrative, site and movement as it moves through time. A successful interpretation of time lacks in focus of space. On the other hand, to focus on space would lack in time. Although these two elements go hand in hand, it is difficult to express both equally. It is for this reason that to represent both architecturally, we cannot look to conventional architectural drawings to capture time. Only by bringing in methods from other mediums such as film can we begin to integrate time into architecture.