Mirage: Architecture\u27s Confounding Experiences

The thesis explores the experiences created from mixing architecture elements with projections, in order to make projections melt into architecture as an inseparable element. By proposing an architecture that integrates the effects and infrastructures of digital displays at the start point of the design process, the project seeks to explore digital displays’ ability to blur physical boundaries, to apply temporality on eternal structures and isolate the exterior from the interior. The project uses mirage, an optical phenomenon which produces illusory images of distant objects, as an analogy to speculate digital displays in architecture. On one hand, mirage shows an ordinary object in an alien setting, offers a distorted reality just like digital displays show images on architecture surfaces; On the other hand, the phenomenon requires concrete physicality to make it happen, just like digital displays requires complicated infrastructures to work. Thus, the project use mirage as the start point to consider what digital displays can offer to architecture. First of all, we believe architecture mirage is able to impose, erase, blur and extend existing boundaries, to distort and manipulate spatial conditions; Secondly, we think architecture mirage can alter architecture from inaction to temporality, making architecture’s function and program change on time basis; Furthermore, we believe architecture mirage is capable of enhancing architectural surfaces’ interactivity, to isolate the exterior from interior. If the interior and the exterior can be understood not simply as the consequence of an envelope or a passive result of building mass, the interior and the exterior can assume enough identity of their own”1 and open up to new possibilities. From these perspectives, the project proposes an architecture, a hybrid project which mixes digital displays with tectonics, to test and explore a wide range of sensual effects and intangible experiences that differ from traditional architectural space. We hope the project can become a preliminary attempt to provide an alternative of the masking process, to inspire and encourage people to think more about architecture plus media, instead of simply masking architecture with a huge screen