VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.
Abstract
The research explores a nuanced form of analog simulation and model-making that mixes form with light projection, enhancing professional and educational practices. Previously, architects used scaled drawings to conceptualize unbuilt spaces, allowing their minds to inhabit the lines on the page. Today, architects create seamless one-to-one digital models using Building Information Modelling, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, simulating built scenarios. Although these technologies provide a direct path to full-scale realism, they restrict the mental immersion of architects and students in media. This paper discusses the installation “Encountering Drawing” as a response to the over-simulation in architectural media. It offers an opportunity to experiment with hybrid drawing methods that could be incorporated into studio teaching. Featured in WORKS+WORDS 2017-2022 and curated by Peter Bertram at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2022, the installation used aluminum models with viewing apertures, screenprints, and projected movies. It facilitated an examination of how form and shifting light interact in the design process of four ongoing housing projects by the authors’ practice, Pac Studio, in various locations across Aotearoa, New Zealand. The “Encountering Drawing” media style influenced the architectural design studio “sHoNkY” at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. Students were encouraged to employ performative aspects of film and a Lo-fi media style, such as rapid model-making and projected images, to design a film production studio. The research will explore how students incorporated ‘amplified loops’ in their designs, challenging disciplinary boundaries through indeterminacy, mental immersion in media, and creating playful architecture with humor.
Aaron Paterson is a practising architect and Senior Lecturer at the Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. He is widely recognised in New Zealand as an architect and has been widely published and awarded. His research in architectural media explores drawings you can inhabit through large-scale installations, including in prominent New Zealand galleries Obectspace, CoCA and internationally at the Royal Danish Academy.
Dr Marian Macken is associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland, teaching in design and media. She trained in architecture, landscape architecture and visual art. Marian’s research examines histories and theories of spatial representation; temporal aspects of architecture; and the book form as spatial practice. Her work has been acquired by international public collection of artists’ books, including those at Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, United Kingdom and Canadian Centre for Architecture and published Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice (2018), as part of Routledge’s Design Research in Architecture series.
Dr Sarosh Mulla is a practising architectural designer and senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland. His design work has been awarded by both the New Zealand Institute of Architects and the Designers Institute of New Zealand. His doctoral research focused on the design and construction of a live project, the ‘Longbush Ecosanctuary Welcome Shelter’. Sarosh is also a founding member of design collective Oh.No.Sumo and the Auckland Crit Club and co-designer of Rainbow Machine, a large-scale public artwork for the Auckland Council.