ARCHITECTURE | MONTAGE - EPFL

ARCHITECTURE | MONTAGE INCORPORATING THE TOOLS OF THE FILMMAKER IN THE DESIGN PROCESS OF THE ARCHITECT MICHAEL HARTWELL | EPFL ENAC MASTER THESIS | JANUARY 2013

Under the supervision of : Prof. George Abou Jaoudé Prof. Urs Egg Teresa Cheung Sze Wing Font: Myriad Pro Condensed

EPFL ENAC SAR MA3 / January 2013 4

ARCHITECTURE | MONTAGE INCORPORATING THE TOOLS OF THE FILMMAKER IN THE DESIGN PROCESS OF THE ARCHITECT

MANIFESTO EXCERPTS ON MONTAGE THE SITE THE FILM REFERENCES

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MANIFESTO

Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Un Chien Andalou

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“One day, you decide to study architecture. You learn to draw plans, sections and axonometrics; make models; discover structure, materials, and even composition. Still, you feel that there is something missing in much of what you read and learn. You are aware that architecture uses sophisticated means of notation - elevation, axonometrics, perspective views, and so on. But you soon realize that they don’t tell you anything about sound, smell, touch, or the movement of bodies through space. (...) The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Bernard Tschumi / Architecture Concepts

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In an age of facilitated access to knowledge and mean on any given field of practice, one cannot overlook the benefits of learning from other disciplines that could potentially enrich one’s own field of practice. The following thesis aims to investigate on a mean that might become a trend in the following years of architectural design. The world of the image, widely studied in the fields of photography, illustration, painting, sculpture, design, filmmaking, etc... plays a significant role in architectural design, thus bringing the architect into studying these fields. Why Filmmaking? Film, Video, Cinema, Motion Picture is deeply impregnated in our culture more than ever before; consumed worldwide, it is also becoming extremely accessible to the mass population. With portable devices capable of recording at a 1080p full HD resolution, anybody could potentially embrace the world of filmmaking. Currently used in architecture as a simple recording or rendering tool, one can easily speculate that filmmaking could very well join the design tools and most importantly, the design process of the architect in the near future...

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“The cameraman, intervenes with what we see in a way which a painting can never do. It directs the eye towards a specific place and a specific story; at the same time it is radical and revolutionary it is also totalitarian. It guides us to a particular side of a story and leaves other parts out. It dulls our perception towards the work of art and introduces distraction as a mode of reception. (...) Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested….The spectator’s process of association in the view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. (...) How does the cameraman compare with the painter? The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law.” Walter Benjamin / The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

“Space without time is a picture.” Olafur Eliasson

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The world of filmmaking encompassed a wide variety of disciplines: Scriptwriting, storyboarding, set design, location scouting, camera operating, camera movement, framing, editing, compositing, post-production, lighting, directing, producing, acting, ... One could find conceptual opportunities for architecture in any of these fields thus being exposed to an infinite amount of possibilities and confusion. To avoid getting lost, an attempt was made to pull out elements that are true to filmmaking, less likely to be shared/confused with other practices of the image such as photography. As a result, the thesis research was narrowed down to the aspect of MONTAGE, widely explored in the works of Walter Benjamin, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard and the associations that Bernard Tschumi made between Architecture and Filmmaking. However, the thesis does not reformulate these works, but is a catalogue of excerpts and quotes that are to be considered and further investigated in a subsequent architectural project. The main focus of “ARCHITECTURE | MONTAGE” is the making of an 18min film of documentary nature in which film technique and theory of MONTAGE are explored and put into practice as well as a cinematographic experimentation and documentation of a chosen site of intervention.

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EXCERPTS ON MONTAGE

Sergei Eisenstein

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“Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art reception of which is consummated by the collectivity in a state of distraction. (...) Architecture is an art form received passively.” Walter Benjamin

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“Walter Benjamin was aware of the constant complication of seeing as the modern world we live in creates a continuous layer of complexity beyond immediate comprehension. Architecture is loosing the battle of the image in a media culture that is becoming more distracted and promoting more passivity. (...) The film camera could provide a new way of thinking about and looking at the city; a way to critically apprehend what seems to have become culturally invisible; to achieve an understanding of self in relation to others in the social space we inhabit. The camera intervenes with the resources of it’s lowerings and liftings, it’s interruptions and isolations, it’s extensions and accelerations. Fragmentation becomes a way of understanding the modern world, montage becomes it’s essential tool. Sergei Eisenstein believed that the introduction of discontinuity in the montage would force the spectator to engage an internal work of interpretation and thinking, thus propelling him into active thinking.” Aaron Taylor Harvey / Cinematequetonics

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Dialectical Montage Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

I. DIALECTICAL MONTAGE “Sergei Eisenstein, who defined the term MONATGE and was it’s most passionate defender, practiced what is known as dialectical montage. The shots appear to collide forcing a viewer to engage their powers of reason to create the necessary connections that bring meaning. A film can present a fragmented data set with confidence, as the human mind has no choice but to construct a whole. In “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin said that talkies and architecture were both art forms received passively, but Eisenstein clearly believed that this passivity could be disrupted through the perpetual interjection of discontinuous imagery forcing the spectator to “mount” each successive shot. Montage is not simply the technique of cutting shots together, it is a dynamic system for the expression of ideas.” Aaron Taylor Harvey / Cinematequetonics

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Continuity Editing Ferris Bueler’s Day Off, John Hughes, 1985

II. CONTINUITY EDITING “The editing is not the central concern of the film. Editing is actually used against itself, as an attempt to make the spectator ignore the cuts and dissolve the awareness of the edit; to serve a seamless whole, a hyper logical filmic totality: more real than actual reality.” Aaron Taylor Harvey / Cinematequetonics

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Montage in the Mise-En-Scène Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954

III. MISE-EN-SCENE One can easily compare “Mise-En-Scène” with theatre; the filmmaker attempts to contain everything in one single frame and shot without any cuts. “Rear Window is an architectural expression of a cinematic idea that challenges cinematic troupes by presenting a rich montage within the mise en scene; segmenting the action of different players but presenting them all at once. Hitchcock creates new connections across seemingly unconnected actions for both the viewer and the protagonist. By drastically reducing the realm of experience and then articulating every moment of it, Hitchcock creates a hermetic experiential space that contains disparate data but still seems coherent.” Aaron Taylor Harvey / Cinematequetonics

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Amir Soltani Soft Cinematic Framework

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“Montage is conflict” Sergei Eisenstein’s five forms of montage Metric - The rate of the cuts are given by a determined length of shots no matter what is happening within the image. Rhythmic - The cutting rate is based upon the rhythm of movement/action that occurs within the shot. Tonal - The emotional tone of the shot determines when a cut occurs. Overtonal - The overtonal montage is the cumulation of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage. Intellectual - An arrangement of shots which, combined, elicit an intellectual meaning. This meaning does not exist within the individual shots; it only arises when they are juxtaposed.

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SPACE | EVENT | MOVEMENT “Architecture’s unique quality is that the means through which it materializes it’s concepts are also the means through which it expresses itself visually and socially. (...) Architecture’s is linked to events in the same way that the guard is linked to the prisoner, the policeman to the criminal, the doctor to the patient, order to chaos. This also suggests that actions qualify spaces as much as spaces qualify actions. (...) Architecture and events constantly transgress each other’s rules, whether explicitly or implicitly. These rules, these organized compositions, may be questioned, but they always remain points of reference. A building is a point of reference for the activities set to negate it. A theory of architecture is a theory of order threatened by the very use it permits. And vice versa. (...) Bodies Violating Space ; First, there is the violence that all individuals inflict on spaces by their very presence, by their intrusion into the controlled order of architecture. Entering a building may be a delicate act, but it violates the balance of a precisely ordered geometry. (Do architectural photographs ever include runners, fighters, lovers?) Architecture, then, is only an organism passively engaged in constant intercourse with users, whose bodies rush against the carefully established rules of architectural thought. Few regimes would survive if architects were to program every single movement of individual and society in a kind of ballet mécanique of architecture.” Bernard Tschumi / Architecture Concepts Bernard Tschumi Advertisements for Architecture

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“The world of cinema was the first to introduce discontinuity a segmented world in which each fragment maintains its own independence, thereby permitting a multiplicity of combinations. At one point in ‘The Golem’, the street is filled with a cheering crowd; later on, it’s strewn with dead bodies. It’s not quite the same street in the two versions. The screenplay in the film begins to seem like an architectural program, describing a set of activities and their relationships. If the “site” of the film is the street, then it’s space is defined by what happens in it. You begin to realize that, as an architect, you will be writing programmatic screenplays of sorts, as if anticipating potential events. If you take a cathedral and project Hollywood movies in it, the building ceases to function as a cathedral. So architecture does not exist without a program, and it’s presence changes with the differing nature of the programs. Space, Event, Movement; The relationship that gives meaning to architecture. Abstracted from a user or a context, a building has no meaning. There is no such thing as a neutral space. Architecture does not exist without something that happens in it. Our perception of architecture depends on the activities that take place inside it. The space is transformed by events.” Bernard Tschumi / Architecture Concepts

Paul Wegener The Golem, 1920

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“The temporality of the Transcripts inevitably suggest the analogy of film. Beyond a common twentieth-century sensibility, both share a frame-by-frame technique, the isolation of frozen bits of action. In both, spaces are not only composed, but also developed from shot to shot so that the final meaning of each shot depends on its context. The relationship of one frame to the next is indispensable insofar as no analysis of any one frame can accurately reveal how the space was handled altogether. The Transcripts are thus not self-contained images. They establish a memory of the preceding frame, of the course of events. Their final meaning is cumulative; it does not depend merely on a single frame, but on a succession of frames or spaces. (...) We begin with a set of discrete frames (five ‘real’ architectural configurations, five ‘real’ movements, five ‘real’ events) and combine them in a set of autonomous and linear sequences (both transformational and programmatic), each with its own internal logic and rational rules. (the skater skates on the skating rink) Only at the end are they all superimposed and then de-constructed into something altogether different. (the quarterback tangoes on the skating rink)” Bernard Tschumi / Manhattan Transcripts

Bernard Tschumi The Manhattan Transcripts: MT4 color plate

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Bernard Tschumi La Villette, Axon

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Themes from The Manhattan Transcripts

Definition Limit Condition Disjunction Classification Event Space Movement Relation Indifference Reciprocity Conflict Notation Movement Notation Event Notation Articulation Frames Sequence Transformation Device Combination Program Narrative Deconstruction Reality Photography Cinema Sensation Violence Pleasure / Madness Bernard Tschumi La Villette, Folie Diagram

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Kuleshov Effect, 1910-1920

“The insertion of any additional space within a spacial sequence can change the meaning of the sequence as well as its impact on the experiencing subject (as in the noted Kuleshov experiment, where the same shot of the actor’s impassive face is introduced into to a variety of situations, and the audience reads different expressions in each successive juxtaposition).” Bernard Tschumi / Manhattan Transcripts

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THE SITE

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Sebeillon is a district of industrial character, located in the historically ancient railway strip of Lausanne. It was chosen as a shooting location for the film because of its intriguing position; right at the THRESHOLD between the soon-to-be urbanised western end of the Flon valley (Sevelin) and the Malley districts further west. At a large scale, Sebeillon stands ”ïn-between” the cities of Renens and Lausanne. There is a certain no-man’s land atmosphere to be felt on site, both visually and programmatically; a consequence of the lack of urban planning and interventions in the past decades. Some clear traces of the 1940’s heavy railway activities are still present, such as tracks and docking platforms. Aside from its “in-between” character, Sebeillon witnesses a large number of “events” as Tschumi qualified them: abandoned as well as main rail-tracks, a metal waste centre, oversized parking surfaces, the Sarassin industrial hangar (protected architecture), high density social housings, an isolated butchery among the tracks, a frequently congestionned main road, a high level of prostitution along the main road and in the social housings. In Sevelin, the neighboring, district industrial lofts and ateliers, creative agencies, two professional schools of 650 students each, a theatre, a concert hall, an isolated bar, an art exhibition centre, a skate-park. During the next decade, Lausanne will be launching a large scale urban program on the whole industrial strip. At the heart of the program stands a massive infrastructural project that will reintroduce the tramway line in the heart of Lausanne as it once was in the 1940’s. One of the lines will run along the industrial strip from Renens to Lausanne, and could potentially trigger urban activity along the strip including Sebeillon. “ARCHITECTURE | MONTAGE” seeks opportunities in the present and future conditions of Sebeillon to investigate on the excerpted themes on conflicting events and montage. Bel-Air Lausanne, 1940

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THE FILM

Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, Man with a Movie Camera

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Personal Gear DSLR Camera, Tripod, Dolly Slider

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The film is a practical application of the previous studied excerpts on montage. Using close and wide angles, with still, hand-held, panning or tracking shots, one discovers many events, conditions and atmospheres through the camera lens. Further attention has been given to the rhythm of the film. Some shots are arranged in a group of equal lengths (metric montage), others shot lengths depend on their content (rythmic montage), another shot reaches almost 5min in lengh and explores the MiseEn-Scène technique. Following the collision theories of Bernard Tschumi, an attempt was made to collide shots of opposing nature in their visual and audio content: The powerful machines crushing tones of metal | The long and painful shot of the worker scraping slowly the dirt off his truck The social housing and future constructions | The parking covered in debris of used condoms The noisy roads and car wash facilities | The hollow atmosphere and echoes of the old hangar The active city centre of Lausanne | The silent landscape of abandoned rail-tracks The crowded skate-park | The crowded butchery

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REFERENCES

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BOOKS

ALEKAN, Henri, Des Lumières et des Ombres, Editions du Collectionneur, 1998 BERGFELDER, Tim, HARRIS, Sue, STREET, Sarah, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, 2007 BLUM, Elisabeth, Atmosphäre: Hypothesen zum Prozess räumlicher Wahrnehmung, Lars Müller Publishers, 2010 FORTIN, David Terrance, Architecture and Science-fiction Film, Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011 HALLAM, Julia, Cities in Film: Architecture, Urban Space and the Moving Image: An International Interdisciplinary Conference, Liverpool School of Architecture, 2008 JOUSSE, Thierry, PAQUOT, Thierry, La ville au cinéma, Cahiers du cinéma, 2005 KLONARIS Thomadaki, Technologies et Imaginaires, Dis Voir, 1996 KOECK, Richard, Cine-scapes: Cinematic Spaces in Architecture and Cities, Paperback, 2012 KOECK, Richard, The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 LAMSTER, Mark, Architecture and Film, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000 PENZ, François, THOMAS, Maureen, Cinema & Architecture : Melies, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia, British Film Institute, 1997 PENZ, François, Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena Through the Moving Image, Intellect, 2012 RUSSETT, Robert, STARR, Cecile, Experimental Animation: An Illustrated Anthology, Van Nostrand Reinhold Inc., 1977

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SCHUMACHER, Michael, SCHAEFFER, Oliver, VOGT, Michael-Marcus, Move, Birkhäuser Architecture, 2010 SCHWARZER, Mitchell, Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion and Media, Princeton Architectural Press, 2004 SCHÖNING, Pascal, Cinematic Architecture, Architectural Association, 2009 SIMOND, Clotilde, PAVIOL, Sophie, Cinéma et architecture : La relève de l’art, Aléas, 2009 SYNNE, Bull, Urban Images: Unruly Desires in Film and Architecture, Sternberg Press, 2012 TAWA, Michael, Agencies of the Frame, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010 TSCHUMI, Bernard, Architectural Manifestoes, Architectural Association, 1979 TSCHUMI, Bernard, Architecture concepts: Red is Not a Color, Rizzoli, 2012 TSCHUMI, Bernard, Architecture In/of Motion, Distributed Art Pub Inc, 1997 TSCHUMI, Bernard, The Manhattan Transcripts, John Wiley & Sons, 1994 ZINSMEISTER, Annett, Gestalt der Bewegung, Jovis, 2012

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PDF ARTICLES

BUNDGAARD, Charlotte, Framing Fragmentation – The Architect as a Master of Montage in http://www.changingroles09.nl/uploads/File/Final.Bundgaard.pdf ÇETİN, Hasan O., Fundamentals of Architactural Design in Comparison to Filmmaking in http://www.etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12607669/index.pdf CHAN, ChiuShui, Motion & Architecture in http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cschan/534/Motion_in_Architecture.pdf CHATZITSAKYRIS, Panagiotis, The Man With The Movie Camera : An Event-Driven Approach to Architectural Design in http://www. dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33034 CHIN, Andrew, Bernard Tschumi - Six Concepts: Excerpt from Architecture and Disjunction in http://www.famusoa.net/achin/courses/tschumi/6concepts.pdf EISENSTEIN, Sergei M., Montage and Architecture (CA. 1938) in http://www.cosmopista.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/eisenstein_montage-andarchitecture.pdf GILLETTE, David, Sergei Eisenstein and the Montage in http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~dgillett/ENGL_411/pdf/DP_Chapter_2_selection_I. pdf HARRIS, Yolande, Architecture and Motion: Ideas on Fluidity in Sound, Image and Space in http://www.yolandeharris.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ArchMotion.pdf HARVEY, Aaron T., Cinémathèquetonics: Within the Apperceptive Montage in http://dl.dropbox.com/u/415948/Cinemathequetonics%20Script.pdf HERRMANN, Erik W., Collisions in Architecture and Film in http://www.trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2079&context=utk_ chanhonoproj

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KYOUNG EUN KWONG, Filmic Architecture: On motion perspective in an Architectural Synthesis in http://www.dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/28326/55653651. pdf?sequence=1 MANOVICH, Lev, Macrocinema in http://www.manovich.net/macrocinema.doc MASSERA, Carmen A., Architectural representation and experiencing space in film in http://www.ort.edu.uy/farq/pdf/documentodeinvestigacion1.pdf ONETO, Paulo D., A Critical Reading of Walter Benjamin´s The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction in http://www.gewebe.com.br/pdf/critical.pdf PETROVICI, Liliana, Art of Film – A Way of Architectural Communication in http://www.ce.tuiasi.ro/~bipcons/Archive/167.pdf ROUND, Tony, The Architecture of Blade Runner: Collage and Contradiction in a Vision of the Future in http://www.architecture.uwaterloo.ca/faculty_projects/terri/pdf/blade_runner_ rev.pdf SHOPE, Joshua Loyd, Screening Architecture: Film Theory and Study as Design Method in http://www.lulu.com/shop/joshua-shope/screening-architecture-film-theory-andstudy-as-design-method/ebook/product-17375773.html SOLTANI, Amir, Mapping Architectural Appearances, Affects, and Amodality in http://www.ksi.edu/seke/Proceedings/dms11/DMS/26_Amir_Soltani.pdf SOLTANI, Amir, Panohaptic Interface for Architectural Filmic Improvisaion in http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_ev09_s9paper3.pdf

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Cover Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, Man with a Movie Camera