Avoiding Figuration, Jacques Lesec, Sean Markle, SCI-Arc, Manhattan, Manhattan skyline, iconographic volumes, landmark architecture, cityscape

Avoiding Figuration is a final thesis project of Jacques Lesec and Sean Markle, developed at SCI-Arc. In words of the authors, it investigates the perception of figuration and void within a complex field condition. Employed strategies oscillate between 2D and 3D, as a means of augmenting the legibility of volume and other times subverting this perceptual reading.

The aim of the project is to challenge conventional understanding of mass and void within the urban context. The design tries to disrupt current condition within which we tend to perceive the city as a collection of individual instances and iconographic volumes, without further integration. This thesis investigates the possibility to generate visual synthesis across adjacent facades, therefore bringing perceptual integration back into Manhattan’s commercial skyline. It introduces new layers of mass-void relationship.

Starting from the interest in developing a complex field of information, two architects developed a catalogue of perceptual devices, derived from a series of analytic drawings and models. Different techniques proved useful along the process, such as masking, expanding and highlighting, both subverting and confounding diverse perceptual readings, ranging from clear volumetric legibility to the complete erasure of volume.

Stating that tower concepts by Dominique Perrault and Thom Mayne influenced the development of this particular project, the authors argue that the drawings were meant to engender a magnitude of dept through almost maniacal layering of information and representational techniques. The strategy was to depict systemic wholes by using rich color and graphic, unsettling the immediacy of initial reading by more quantifiable layer, exposing highly disparate networks of technical details.

Avoiding Figuration, Jacques Lesec, Sean Markle, SCI-Arc, Manhattan, Manhattan skyline, iconographic volumes, landmark architecture, cityscape

Avoiding Figuration, Jacques Lesec, Sean Markle, SCI-Arc, Manhattan, Manhattan skyline, iconographic volumes, landmark architecture, cityscape

Avoiding Figuration, Jacques Lesec, Sean Markle, SCI-Arc, Manhattan, Manhattan skyline, iconographic volumes, landmark architecture, cityscape

Avoiding Figuration, Jacques Lesec, Sean Markle, SCI-Arc, Manhattan, Manhattan skyline, iconographic volumes, landmark architecture, cityscape

 

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