David Field Photography

Beautiful photography + painting + model technique by David Field.


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Keith Loutit

I found these videos through Boing Boing a few weeks back, and can't help but share them. Keith Loutit's Time-Lapse videos:



Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.


Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

After watching these scale-model-esque videos, I tried experimenting with a couple of my own images in photoshop. Here's a doctored up version of one of my pictures from Genova's roofline.


And Lisboa:

They could use a bit of polishing, but it's a fun start.

Michael Wolf Photography

In lieu of enviable economic prosperity on Eastern horizons, this, a recent series entitled "Architecture of Density", by Michael Wolf. Each monumental high-rise, photographed in Hong Kong shapes an urban experience of regularity, singular character, and massive functional compartmentalized living. Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer (Canada = 24/sq km), the majority of these citizens living in high-rise buildings, as shown. Such Brave New Monotony as this echoes the legacy of modern architecture, of reductive standardization, reinstating the importance of variation + irrationality and structured difference in architecture.
















More photographs from Wolf's folio website.

Recto Verso

Recto Verso is an architectural concept that depends on the three-dimensional two-sidedness of paper. While this seems obvious, in contemporary architectural drawing, this idea is quickly forgotten because of a dominant computer-based drawing medium that mainly facilitates a two-dimensional experience on-screen. In the traditional sense, recto verso drawings emerged firsthand out of necessity — the conservation of valuable drawing material by using both sides of the paper. However, over time the ancients developed a refined technique of representation that could incorporate elevation on the recto aligned with section on the verso, for example. The effect of this technique alters and heightens one’s consciousness of the space that is observed, creating a total front-to-back understanding of the space in the observer. This three-dimensional spatial sense — looking forward and backward simultaneously — is the essence of recto verso thinking and can be analogized with the mythological characteristics of Janus, Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings whose two faces look into the past and future simultaneously.

Janusian thinking (same as recto verso thinking) is a more widely known concept that can be attributed to many creative fields, particularly architecture. It is especially important for the architect who uses this mode of thinking to visualize complex spaces. However, the drawing technique is mainly forgotten, a result of paper in plenty. To quote Marco Frascari, from his blog Zibaldone:

In architectural drawing the verso/recto approach usher us into different realms from which we are to take back mysteries to our particular realm. The magic of a recto verso conceiving is to alter someone's consciousness. The alterity of the recto verso architectural conjuring up is essential for the making of a proper architecture responding to the unknown other.

Contemporary examples of recto verso drawings are hard to come by, as this technique has long since evolved from its simple origin. Current practices naturally require more sophisticated methods of representing a building and its components than simply imitating its sectional form on the verso. Applications of the idea however are expressed in many surprising ways. The best example is not under architecture at all, but of photography and the work of Robert Heinecken.

From Heinecken's website: "The Recto/Verso photograms were made without the use of camera or film. A single page from a mass-circulation magazine was placed in direct contact with color photographic paper and exposed to light. The resulting image superimposes the visual and verbal information from the front and back of the magazine page. No collage, manipulation, or other handwork was employed."

[image: Robert Heinecken]

[image: Robert Heinecken]

[image: Robert Heinecken]

[image: Robert Heinecken]

[image: Robert Heinecken]

Robert Heinecken's portfolio of twelve photograms.

Panoramas

I've just discovered this neat little software tool which allows amazing photographic panoramas. PTgui is a sophisticated program which you pop in a certain number of photos and it automatically stitches them all together. It has incredible architectural implications because you can create elevational photographs out of inaccessible viewpoints, improving on the fragmented effect of overlapping individual images, and saving lots of time. It also allows you to create VR "lookthroughs" of spaces (i.e. single point perspective at centre of semi-sphere or full sphere). Have a look at some of the ones I've created for the Gesù Church as well as some from Ireland. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't support the VR videos (or I haven't figured out how to post them) so you'll have to ask me to send them to you if you're interested.







This last image (as well as the one before the fish-eye image) are impossible views of the side elevation. I should be well inside the neighbouring buildings. Just from taking pictures from a single point on the ground level in all different directions, the program figures out how to stitch the images together. This can have a major implication on photographic documentation of buildings, in addition to the touristic novelty:

Hugh Doran

I've come across these black and white photographs by Hugh Doran (1926-2004) and wanted to share them. Doran was a printer by profession for the Guinness company and these are some of his 'amateur' photographs which he compiled in his spare time. A lot of his photos are of Dublin and its architecture. His prints are on display at the moment at the Irish Architectural Archives.







These samples are from a new publication: Hugh Doran Photographer, Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, 2007.