Architecture as 3d visualization of information - Frank Gehry's Art Gallery of Ontario
Is architecture a kind of information visualization? Perhaps if you consider the functions that buildings support and the people they house to be very rich data. Consider this example below showing a topographic rendering of text topic search results in which the size and adjacency of "mountains" tells you about the similarity of results.
And if viewed this way, then does it become reasonable, or even necessary, to evaluate (criticize) architecture in information visualization terms like legibility and accuracy?
Frank Gehry's buildings, like his "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague would hold up pretty well under such scrutiny. As whimsical as it looks, the building actually takes a lot of cues (reads data from) its environment, squeezing in so as not to obstruct the sightlines of its neighbours and fluidly reflecting the river it overlooks.
At the recent OCAD VizDay, Pierre Boulanger repeated a well-known addage: without knowing the uncertainty of a piece of data, it is not a measurement, merely an opinion. Architecture is historically considered to be an art rather than a science; in that view, buildings more like opinion than data. But with Gehry's deep engagement with software, more and more his conceptual and modeling processes are data driven.
What can we see visualized in Gehry's newest project, the renovated and expanded Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto? There is something about that sweeping wing of glass along Dundas Street that seems to want to be measuring wind currents, northern light and perhaps sound bouncing around from the bustling Chinese market a block west. And the big blue titanium box on Grange Park at the rear; it's a sky-ish sort of blue, a blue like the sky reflected in Georgian Bay, meant to disappear under the right conditions. How long before the color of building facades can be modulated by computers so that they change with the weather?
And if viewed this way, then does it become reasonable, or even necessary, to evaluate (criticize) architecture in information visualization terms like legibility and accuracy?
Frank Gehry's buildings, like his "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague would hold up pretty well under such scrutiny. As whimsical as it looks, the building actually takes a lot of cues (reads data from) its environment, squeezing in so as not to obstruct the sightlines of its neighbours and fluidly reflecting the river it overlooks.
At the recent OCAD VizDay, Pierre Boulanger repeated a well-known addage: without knowing the uncertainty of a piece of data, it is not a measurement, merely an opinion. Architecture is historically considered to be an art rather than a science; in that view, buildings more like opinion than data. But with Gehry's deep engagement with software, more and more his conceptual and modeling processes are data driven.
What can we see visualized in Gehry's newest project, the renovated and expanded Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto? There is something about that sweeping wing of glass along Dundas Street that seems to want to be measuring wind currents, northern light and perhaps sound bouncing around from the bustling Chinese market a block west. And the big blue titanium box on Grange Park at the rear; it's a sky-ish sort of blue, a blue like the sky reflected in Georgian Bay, meant to disappear under the right conditions. How long before the color of building facades can be modulated by computers so that they change with the weather?
Labels: AGO, architecture, Gehry
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Posted by howboy at 11:28 AM.
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