Projecting the uncanny : the intersection of visuality and architecture

Abstract

This thesis explores architectural drawings and representations appropriate to describe forms and spaces in zero and artificial gravity. Its focus is on the physical forces associated with life and motion in a rotating environment and the formal and geometric architectural response to those forces. Orthographic drawing relies on a flat plane onto which lines are statically inscribed. This project hopes to speculate on an alternative drawing that can help to describe habitation and the uncanny experience of life in space. Without the constraints of gravity, architecture is no longer forced to have plumb walls, that floors, or ramps with specific ratios. Zero gravity presents itself with its own challenges of disorientation and visual confusion. This project will juxtapose the effects of zero gravity with the spaces imbued with artificial gravity generated by centripetal force. Human experience in outer space is tied to feelings of disorientation and distortion. This project seeks to understand these perceptual changes in order to adapt the human body to a new way of seeing. The visualization of movement through the presence of the human body and its role in orientation and perception will set the parameters for an experiential representation of life in space.