Architecture | Imagination-Visualisation-Representation

 

The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant defines art as "a kind of representation that is purpose-driven and, though without a purpose, nonetheless cultivates the mental abilities of social communication".

As we learn more about what Kant wanted to convey in this kind of art definition, we see that it encapsulates the expression of representational, formal, and expressive elements while also emphasizing the creative journey of the art. Kant viewed art within the larger topic of aesthetic judgement, which encompassed judgments of beauty, of the sublime, and teleological judgments of natural organisms and of nature itself.

 

An idea is usually conceived with the intent of achieving something concerning a justification of the demand envisioned for the creation of an entity.

In a sense, it is the same for designing the spaces as well.

The expression of an idea becomes a key element by the way it is visualized, envisioned, and eventually enacted. The ability to convince an idea lies in its assessment with a thorough understanding, a powerful imagination, and a vivid visualisation. Creating a visual representation of an idea demonstrates how you think, as well as how you create.

 

A visualisation can be carefully defined as a language for putting forth an idea after its generation and expressing the context within which it is intended to be used. It may also happen, more than often, that an idea may not be appropriately addressed in its creation process and eventually not lead to being carefully crafted into a visualisation. In addition, there is the possibility of misinterpreting the idea and defining it differently. 

 

It is essential to have a significant understanding of the overall creative generation process, to

begin with. As classical philosophy says that “The soul never thinks without a fantasy”. 

Imagination enables you to visualize architecture more developed, organized, and refined as a result. Laying the foundation for visualisation requires addressing the imagination as a tool and not restricting it to an abstract concept. Imagination exists by the work of picturing and

idealising in the mind. Imagination plays a vital role in cementing the gap between the generation of an idea and the perception of understanding the same. 

More often than not, architectural imagination develops an idea that helps navigate the process of understanding on a more philosophical or ideological level. It takes you away from the technical or functional aspects of an architectural entity. This particular aspect of the architecture imagination helps one to assess a better methodology for visualisation. To visualise a particular idea, the imagination hence lays down its philosophical parameters, it helps visualisation generate and thrive in a more independent state. The perception can remain as it is from the beginning, but one has to be careful and mindful as to have the perception its flexibility and a sense of understanding that will let the imagination take control and

manifest a better judgement towards the visualisation.

 

Architecture produces knowledge.

 

A renowned Austrian Architect, Adolf Loos states, “If we find a mound six feet long and three feet wide in the forests, formed into a pyramid, shaped by a shovel, we become

serious and something says, "someone lies buried here"... Now that is architecture.”

 

It is interesting to note what and how Loos describes here. We mentally associate the mound, its shape, and the idea of a mound with a pyramid, or a burial structure, since he further mentions that someone is buried here. Furthermore, there are tools involved, so there must have been some human intervention in some sense, the shape, the pyramid(for example)-like structure, shaping itself with a shovel, makes one approach the aesthetics seriously. The seriousness here comes from an awareness of THAT relatability. And that THAT is Architecture. The following example is a result of an imaginative and cultivating mind. Our perception of an object is formed by our sensory experience, understanding of what it might otherwise mean, and while collecting information about the tools and the functions involved, our minds proceed towards making judgements, referring here to the 'someone burying there'. 

With the aid of understanding and imagination, we are able to describe briefly what the creative journey would have been for the viewer to view an object differently.

 

A material or a practical image is required to process and to carry a particular thought.

Imagery, meaning, and a sense of purpose are necessary for the expression of the imagination. Imagination can be stated as a mechanism to functioning between perception and understanding. For a thought to process itself in that order, the space in our minds has a picturing take place, for it to transform itself into imagination. To perceive something, then something needs to exist or to remember something, then something needs to have happened in the past. Imagination is a mental ability that stands distinct from these two i.e.

perceiving and remembering.

Imagination leads to the creation of something. A generation or picturization, the visual image of an idea. It creates a picture without prior experiences or judgements.

 

Imagination also stands different from conceptualisation. A concept, for instance, can sometimes be somewhat abstract or just an idea or a definition of something happening or

existing. But imagination requires it to be there in the form of a picture/image for it to have itself accepted or digested as an idea. For example; the concept of slavery can be explained but to make someone imagine and thereby understand slavery, a picture or a scene has to be enacted or a painting or a photograph must be viewed.

 

In the overall format or the flow of the creative generation process of an idea, where exactly does imagination and visualisation lie? Or what effect or the interdependency do they have on each other as well as the understanding of the representational tools?

 

As humans (or not) our sensory experiences lie at the lowest level of this paradigm. What we see, how we see, the touch, what is the smell/ essence etc. are the sensory experiences that lay at the bottom of everything. These elements remain what they are, unprocessed.

What is important to note here, is that our ability to understand these experiences remains independent of the sensory experiences. We are unable to interpret these experiences in a way that would allow us to generate concepts or ideas from them. We may have a better understanding of what the sensory experiences are doing to us, or what it means when we experience those things, for example; the feel of a particular texture or the smell of a particular stone etc. But translating this into an understanding of the requirement requires us to picture it and imagine it for us as per the requirement and then understand it.

In this way, imagination is at the intersection of sensory structure and comprehension and bridges the two. It provides and processes a generated thought of the senses into a picture for this particular understanding to take place. 

It sets the understanding on a path towards knowledge and overall different experience henceforth. The experience of the architecture with regards to its sense is processed. It is schematised into a diagram or pictorial imagery for the understanding and the perceived by the understanding as a matter of knowledge.

 

And here we reflect on the saying, Architecture produces knowledge.

 

Accordingly, architectural imagination generates information. Going further, with this generated and acquired architectural knowledge and the ability to understand, the mind is now able to set up its course for visualisation. The work to create an image/diagram and interpret the same has been done, and now it will be further processed for visualisation. 

There is also something intriguing about the fact that this visualisation becomes subjective too since its navigation and schematisation are more indicative and directed. Since the very groundwork, basis has been that of the sensory experience which remains unique amongst us in our human capacities and they also differ from each other, given our distinctive abilities to go through these experiences.

 

Therefore, a quality that is discernible, or visual, of a particular space or architectural entity may vary, depending on how it is visualized. Since they are perceived differently by the flexibility of imagination, the generation of the knowledge gets affected thereby reflecting in the visualisation.

 

Deciphering a particular representation of architecture can serve as a tool towards a follow up architectural imagination, thereby opening up various and new ways of the philosophy driving the object. Moreover, it is also evident that a set of conceivable ideas may have multiple visual aspects and multiple representations.

 

Appearance in the entire process is always as important as the process itself. 

We need to understand the diagrammatic structural happening, which is also somewhat slightly deeper than the surface level understanding of the appearance.

A human mind is more receptive to graphic information (as well as words under certain conditions). A carefully chosen representation can be held to establish a dialogue between the identity-imagination- visualisation – final output. Simply put, as it is widely said, for better presentation and easy acceptance, the generated visualisation should have a better representation. 

In some instances, representation can trail itself back to the perceived imagery when the imagination is at work or can envisage and further assemble all of the information accumulated through an understanding of the data from the visualization and form its course for representation. Representation becomes one of the direct/seen mediums of the execution of imagination, before its practical or physical execution. It also becomes necessary not just to represent its types and functions in a direct architectural way, but to portray them in a way that resonates with the viewer's imagination.

 

Hence also, when it comes to the representation of a concept, it follows a certain process. An idea or thought for a concept is conceived/generated. Producing a visual illustration of what it means to you, visualizing it further by this understanding, and displaying it accordingly.

 

Setting a context for representation is the process of understanding the concepts and dialogue the artists engaged in with the process of generating ideas and imagination. Let’s look at the architectural presentation in the medium of a film. The architectural project would have a set of a brief as a piece of initial information. The brief gets sensed or experienced to process an image as to how the necessary output would be. The imagination further leads to understanding the sensory requirement in terms of aesthetics etc. and the idea to see and view an object to achieve an establishment of the same. Once that is being accomplished, once the model is ready, to depict what so far needed to be conveyed and laid forward, the representation once hence would trail back to the concepts and the overall process after but representing it with the generated and accomplished architectural object. 

For example; it could speak of the conceptualisation of an idea. Which would lead to a depiction of the same and even generation of certain concepts and having the principle of architectures along with. Further demonstrating an understanding of these concepts and ideologies as well as their imagination, and thereby leading to or revealing the entity or the architectural object in its entirety. This particular methodology, as mentioned earlier, could go otherwise also.

The interconnection and the intercedence of all these factors, sensory-imagination-understanding-visualisation-representation allows the whole thing to be flexible in its explanatory and documentation aspects.

 

One of the key things for an architect and/or an artist to have or to be doing is to keep imagining and along with being awake and aware of the sensory experiences and constantly try to sail through these interdependences and interplays and understand how it might reflect onto his or her work and creations. The constant practice of doing so shall timely keep enhancing one's abilities to experience, imagine and create better things for mankind.