Moving Collage or «Image-temps» in Instrumental Exploration of New Modes for Analyzing, Interpreting and Conceiving Urban Spaces

Abstract

Banal space, as lived and perceived, carries the trace of time and bears the mutations that time unavoidably breeds. We are unable to perceive space in a perfectly immobile state. Everything moves: our eyes, our bodies, we in the machines that move us about, among other bodies, other machines and the natural elements that surround us. Every environment is perceived in a temporal flux – banal space is a four-dimensional space. Traditionally, architectural space is apprehended in three dimensions. It is an idealized space expressed through virtual representation. Banal space as experienced in time is difficult to master – it unfolds before us in an infinite number of unpredictable shapes and configurations and the architect, as projector and constructor, has but little control.. Ever since the beginning of cinema, moving pictures have burst into the realm of architectural thought. Architects' interest in cinema is expressed by numerous explorations conducted by modern avant-gardes, particularly in those works of the Bauhaus. Vision in Motion, written by László Moholy-Nagy, broadly disseminated these ideas in post-war architectural education. It took however nearly a century before animation was adopted into architectural representation as a common instrument to think, analyse, conceive and create space. Everything seemed to evolve significantly with the increasing flexibility of digital tools, however in the process, something had been lost. The space-time generated by 3D software programs commonly used by architects had neither the quality nor richness of initial explorations with conventional film. This long trajectory of architectural representation from static to moving image involves perhaps another component that embodies obstacles of a nature other than technical.