How can energy of the past be transformed into a new one, relevant today?
How this phase of transition in time and space is reflected on human perception?
An overlay of the past and the future can possibly render this notion, as in light interference with mutual gain or loss of energy of the intersecting wavelengths.
Synonymous to the festival, the installation "Architecture of Movement" attempts an innovative transformation of perception through the realized environment.
The model is situated on one of the most significant locations of Yaroslavl: the Volga embankment. The linear riverside space sets the characteristic vectors of perception and provides the site of the installation with a dynamic ground condition.
The inclined landscape and the viewing standpoints along the river define the compositional conditions in terms of the structure’s physical performance and the desired visual effect respectively. The variables of the design are connected to the topography of the landscape and the viewer’s perceptual stimuli triggered by the location.
The design is made up of the same components, wooden poles bonded together on the top with mobile nodes-spheres, providing the elements with multiple plane rotational freedom.
A rope passes through the balls allowing the peak of the structure to form a three dimensional curve.
The overall composition comprises of three structures that are complementary to each other or extend each other.
The genotype of the section is an inverted ‘V’, whereby the lower points are fixed to the ground following a curve on the inclined landscape, and the peak is positioned along a curve configured three-dimensionally in space.
The peak of the inverted ‘V’ has a variable height that guides the two meter long wooden poles to create a curve at the lower fixing points obeying to the topological properties of the landscape surface on that particular spot.
Parallel to the physical performance of the structure -the basic conceptual principle that the project is based on -is to create a three-dimensional ‘moiré’ effect. The arrangement of the compositional elements generates an undulating pattern adapting to the ground, while the variable intervals among the poles produce overlapping gradient densities that alter the way that the background landscape is visually perceived by the pedestrians.
The physical behavior of the structure as well as its capacity to produce moiré effects have been studied within an integrated design system, based on the deployment of complex digital modeling techniques and extensive physical modeling.
The viewer moves around the sculpture resembling the natural flow of energy and experiences a range of visual effects depending on the viewing angle and the speed of movement. Viewers are confronted with different degrees of transparency and blurriness in the interference between landscape and structure.
Cyclists and rollerbladers experience the effect at a higher speed mainly from the higher promenade of the embankment.
Pedestrians view the installation at a slower speed from a lower standpoint (lower promenade), following a vector almost parallel to the array of the structures. This unfolds the complexity of the multiple overlays that allow different degrees of transparency to emerge.
The objects are being virtually experienced from inside particularly by children. In this case the interaction between the moiré effect and the human body creates another layer of reading the structure from the outside.
In order to avoid collision, the human body needs to bend and twist in the same manner the surface of poles naturally undulates. The space-filtering medium becomes ‘inhabitable’ and filters from inside not only the background but also everything around it in all possible directions.
To rethink the interference between past and future, a new level of experience is needed: The project anticipates opening up the possibility for a new synergy between humans and the environment, and setting a new reference that stimulates citizens to break free from conventions of perceiving their city and themselves within it.
Project was made in collaboration with Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas