spaces
2020. 9. 26¶
While cities cannot physically move, in a way they seem to live a life quite similar to the people moving within them. Think about Pangyo - during the weekday commute hours it interacts busily with people going to and from work, but as night falls there are fewer buses and people out, and it gradually becomes quiet and alone, only to bustle again in the morning. On weekends it spends time with people who have come to visit for leisure (of course in far fewer, more peaceful numbers compared to weekdays), until Monday comes around again. This cycle mirrors the life patterns of the people who work there. While we go to work in the city and then leave, from the city's perspective it could seem like people flock in and then depart. Cities may be immobile, but their daily rhythms reflect the ebb and flow of human activity within them.
2020. 9. 15¶
At a cafe I visited recently, there was a bar table by the window facing the street. At the very end of the bar table next to my seat, there was a standing mirror. The mirror was angled vertically based on a slightly downward perspective from the seated position, but it was ever so slightly tilted such that the counter on the opposite side came into view. So while working on my laptop, I could see the counter area in my peripheral vision. It felt as if there was a hole next to me on the ground level, and through that hole I could see a space below where people were passing by. The angled mirror created this illusion of being able to peek into another space from my seat.
2019. 1. 18.¶
Until dinner time, the city was bustling with buses, cars, and pedestrians, but a few hours later when I came out, only empty taxis were circling around the buildings. It felt like when the tide comes in and cuts off the way from the office to the station. The city had completely transformed into a different place.
2018. 10. 28.¶
Walls.
Some tiles were coated while others were not, so on rainy days, hidden pictures became visible.
2018. 7. 2.¶
Maps.
If people take and upload photos with labels indicating the color of the place, could we figure out the colors of a neighborhood?
You could search for "a neighborhood with this combination of colors" and find matching areas.
It seems possible to crawl location-tagged photos on the internet and create the color map.
2018. 3. 28.¶
A room.
I thought about marking dots on the walls so that from a distance they would appear as constellations at a glance, but the room was too small to actually try it out and see.
2017. 12. 6.¶
A room.
A world without doors.
I Imagined rooms where one must pass through mazes to exit into the hallway.
2017. 10. 22.¶
A maze.
A world where only what you are currently looking at remains the same, and everything changes the moment you look away.
I thought there was an entrance behind me, but when I turned around, there was a pathway.
2017. 7. 18.¶
A library.
Bookshelves
Bookshelves stacked tightly together in multiple layers
Tunnels to crawl through between the layered bookshelves
An ant colony-like library
2017. 6. 6.¶
As I was looking at the text on a screen, when I raised my head, the letters followed my gaze and stuck to the surfaces of buildings.
It made me wonder if we really need to convey stories only through text right in front of our eyes, like on paper or screens. What if poems and novels were engraved onto buildings, not just signs or advertisements? What if words were arranged across multiple buildings?
2017. 5. 1.¶
The idea of drawing each cross-section of tree branches one by one to represent a nest in a blueprint seemed far too daunting. So I pondered how to capture in the blueprint not the final appearance, but the process for creating the result.
After some time, I realized that even with the same materials and methods, the end results could differ. The relationship between the result and the method was not one-to-one, but potentially one-to-many. The blueprint then had to express all the possible outcomes in some way.
It didn't take long to realize that even the manufacturing methods could be controlled by variables within another overarching system. If the results were subordinate to the manufacturing methods, which were in turn subordinate to another controlling system, then this could theoretically extend to infinitely nested systems within systems. I'm not sure if this perspective truly helped in understanding blueprints, but it's certain I could never view them the same way again after this realization.
2017. 4. 13.¶
When I came to after dozing off for a bit, the Windows update had already taken away all the modeled spaces.
2017. 4. 12¶
If I remember correctly, it was perhaps a paper from around 2008, where someone used an algorithm that Google had previously employed for search engines in the late 1990s to analyze patterns of how people occupy urban spaces. Setting aside all physical material aspects for a moment, what are the inherent characteristics of the interconnected spatial structure itself, and how do these characteristics influence people's experiences of navigating those spaces? Does the notion of "space" here necessarily have to refer to physical spaces?
2017. 3. 10.¶
In response to the question "Why can't I build a house on my own land with my own money as I wish, due to regulations?" the answer given was: "Since buildings outlive their original builders/owners, ownership cannot be limited to just the person who constructed the building. Therefore, buildings need to be viewed as social assets rather than solely private property, which necessitates regulations."
2017. 2. 21.¶
I suddenly wondered what it would feel like for beings who perceive the city through smell when it rains. Would it be like a gigantic cotton candy of various colors surrounding the city gradually dissolving and fraying away from the raindrops? Or like water droplets falling onto densely written words in the air with a felt-tip pen, causing the ink to bleed and spread everywhere?
2017. 2. 15.¶
A room.
The plan was to demolish several walls and partition new spaces, creating rooms with interiors so complex they could not be understood at a glance. However, after all the walls were demolished, it was realized that the blueprints had been lost. As a result, all the spaces became one with the exterior.
2017. 2. 10.¶
A hallway.
Ahead stretches a perfectly symmetrical path to the left and right. Behind, the floor is gradually disappearing.
A person in this hallway has three choices: go left, go right, or fall along with the disappearing floor.
Listing these three options sequentially doesn't feel right - they are equally viable choices.
The vanishing floor behind is actually being reassembled by workers into the new floor of whichever path the person chooses, but this can't be perceived until after the fall. Those who fall without choosing a path end up replacing the existing workers. While some may think continuously choosing the same direction, going around in circles, would be impossible in a pre-constructed physical structure, no one has ever managed to run ahead faster than the skilled pace of the floor reassembly workers.
2017. 2. 9¶
In the dream, there were countless tiny eyes moving around inside a bigger eye, and they could only see the body they lived in through the reflections off the surfaces of other massive bodies standing outside.
2017. 1. 28.¶
Looking out the window of a bus stopped at a traffic light.
The pedestrian signal turned green, and a few people from each end of the crosswalk started walking in opposite directions. Some cars seemed to be in a hurry, waiting to make a right turn.
Just as the last pedestrians were finishing crossing, a woman running with a trunk from far away arrived at the crosswalk. Even though the green walk signal still had more than half its time remaining, the waiting cars began making their right turns one after another. If it had been just one or two cars, the woman could have crossed safely, but the cars and buses kept following each other through. The woman gave up on crossing and stopped to catch her breath.
2017. 1. 25¶
If someone without architectural training may not notice such details, we can flip the thought and ask - can someone with architectural training avoid noticing these details? Continuing this thought process of questioning the created details and patterns, one could eventually free oneself from the rules. Ultimately, we may be left with only the most fundamental elements needed for generating spaces. Then, revisiting the previously questioned details and patterns from this liberated standpoint could aid in understanding architecture in a broader context.
If we view current blueprints (and architecture) as constructed from valued boundaries derived from infinite overlapping boundaries of possibilities, then the blueprints we commonly encounter represent merely a refined subset of countless possibilities. Paradoxically, to expand our perspective to wider possibilities, we may need to expose ourselves to less refined, more rudimentary blueprints. This lack of over-refinement could open our eyes to a broader range of architectural potentials lying beyond conventional rules and patterns.
2017. 1. 23.¶
A room.
Razor-sharp beams of light sweep across the contours of the mirror-walled room as they pass through.
Where does the light originate?
How much of the room must the light sweep across to discern its structure?
Can we recognize that there exist spaces where the light cannot reach no matter how it bounces and reflects?
2017. 1. 5.¶
If you ride the subway line 2 around sunset and look outside through the door windows, the scenery appears cooler in tone than expected. However, if you lower your body a bit and look out the bottom part of the window, the scenery takes on a warmer feeling.
This made me think that children must always view the warm world.
2016. 11. 26.¶
...
In simple terms, it means they are trying to analyze blueprints using the same methods as processing language, so they are thinking they might be able to view blueprints as language too.
In this process, they can't help but consider how to structure the blueprints and convert them into input for learning.
...
Spatial boundaries like walls, doors, and windows, spaces divided into roles like living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms, and spaces that connect areas like hallways.
Distinct designs of these elements and spaces where boundaries are deliberately blurred or roles are combined out of necessity.
Not just houses, but spatial strategies of various facilities like schools, department stores, museums, parks, and government offices.
Moving spaces like subways and buses.
...
- Excerpted from notes written a few days ago.
If an AI were developed that could intrinsically structure the meaning of sentences, and if the spaces around us could also be structured in a way similar to language, then it occurred to me that developing an AI that can intrinsically structure the meaning of spaces might not be impossible.
2016. 11. 24.¶
"Suddenly, while looking at a passing bus, I thought about how a warm mass of air was flowing and gliding over the cold road surface. If there were a way to sense temperature like we see colors or hear sounds, we could perceive it without even thinking about it."
...
"Imagine motionless rectangular solid masses scattered about under the cool winter air, and masses the size of cars lining up and moving around in various parts of the city."
2016. 7. 23.¶
People who cannot see are said to learn how to perceive their surroundings by making clicking sounds with their fingers or tongues, and listening to the echoes of these sounds bouncing off objects and terrain.
It occurred to me that for those who have gained the ability to perceive the world this way, certain music might be experienced as the surrounding landscape or objects. Conversely, if they were to create music, they may be able to sonically construct the spaces they imagine in their minds.
2016. 4. 5.¶
On a crowded subway, I saw three people forming a triangle facing each other, securing a stable space where they could use their smartphones.
2015. 6. 1.¶
I had a dream while I dozed off for a moment, and in that dream, I had to rotate my body 1 and 3/4 turns to see the landscape that I had originally been looking at.