Abstract
This research explores the intersection of visual optics and architecture by analyzing contracted space of Baroque geometries. Inspired by Borromini’s work, the “Shrine” project embodies a solution to narrow passage design challenges, merging spatial perception strategies with minimalist details to create an immersive and theatrical experience for small space architecture.
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Notes
(Luneburg 1947) The Luneburg’s alley psychology experiment studied how people perceive straightness in visual space by asking participants to draw an outdoor alley using lines and dots to correct what they perceived as not being straight. The results showed a disconnection between participants’ visual perception and what was known as straightness.
(Indow 1991: 67) Indow reviewed Luneburg’s experiment and expanded on it by studying the impact of different lamination levels on the perception of straightness. Indow conducted a series of drawings in a dark room and found that optics are usually perpendicular to the line of sight but are also affected by light. Indow discovered that in contracted visual spaces, such as an alley, there is a consistency where the space does not shrink.
(Hatfield 2012: 41) Hatfield’s Euclidean Contracted Space diagram illustrates depth in which a perceiver observes a real hallway experience is between the angle of 80–85 degrees.
Ibid., 47–48.
Ibid., 57–59. Hatfield’s report examines how parallel hallways viewed by the human eye can appear spatially contracted yet phenomenologically straight. His Euclidean Contracted Space diagram illustrates this phenomenon in an ordinary room, showing the perspective view angles with dotted lines. This diagram has the potential to regulate and refine architectural plans, enabling designers to enhance the “forced perspective” effect by placing elements on the contracted lines.
(Downer 2009: 255) Borromini states, “I wished to follow in some part in the steps of the Ancients who did not date place vaults above walls, but raised columns, or piers, in the angles of rooms or halls, over which they cross vaults, and all the weight rested on them.”
For a brief history of the design and construction of this palace and Palazzo Spada, see (Wasserman 1962: 58–63).
The “Accelerated perspective” was first used in 1480 by Donato Bramante in Milan, for the construction of an apse, and in Vicenz by Palladio and Scamozzi for the construction of the Teatro Olimpico (1585), see (Neppi 1975).
Descartes’ “Prisms, Lenses, and Mirrors” (1637) and James Gibson’s theories on visual perception offer different perspectives on retina optics. However, the study of Borromini’s Palazzo Spada challenges the assumption that the visual world is Euclidian, as demonstrated through analysis of projected contracted space.
(Gel and Chen-Morris 2010: 191) Baroque optics refer to the disappearance of the human observer in optical treatises from Kepler’s optics to Descartes’ Doubt. It is described as “a flat image of no inherent epistemic value, as the vague, reversed reflection of another, wholly independent object.“
The Our Lady of Guadalupe relic holds great cultural significance for the Latinx church community, as it is believed to be connected to a supernatural apparition event that occurred in 1531. According to the account, an image of the Virgin Mary was miraculously fused onto Saint Juan Diego’s fabric cloth during the early hours on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. This event is recounted in the 16th-century Nican Mopohua text, which was written in Nahuatl. Anonymous. (n.d.). Nican mopohua.
Various contemporary architects have used contracted space in their designs, including: Hans Hollein’s Haas Haus (1990) in Vienna, Austria, which uses angled mirrors to create a “canyon effect”; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum (1950) in NYC, which features a spiral ramp to create grandeur and dynamism; Preston Scott Cohen’s (2011) Herta and Paul Amir Building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which deploys angled walls to create dynamic movement and flow within the gallery space; and Zaha Hadid’s (2011) London Aquatics Centre, where the undulating roof generates a sense of compression and expansion as visitors move through the space.
References
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Braund, Michael. 2008. From Inference to Affordance: The Problem of Visual Depth-Perception In the Optical Writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Gibson. St. Catharines, Ontario: Brock University.
Gel, Ofer and Raz Chen-Morris. 2010. Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: From Kepler’s Optics to Descartes’ Doubt. Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. 71, No. 2: 191–217
Hatfield, Gary. 2012. Phenomenal and Cognitive Factors in Spatial Perception. In Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition, and Constancy, edited Gary Hatfield and Sarah Allred. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 35–62.
Indow, Tarow. 1991. A Critical Review of Luneburg’s Model with Regard to Global Structure of Visual Space. Psychological Review. American Psychological Association, Inc. Vol. 98 (No. 3): 430–453.
Luneburg, R. K. 1947. Mathematical analysis of binocular vision. Princeton University Press.
Neppi, Lionello. 1975. Palazzo Spada. Rome: Editalia.
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Wasserman, Jack. 1962. Palazzo Spada. The Art Bulletin. Vol. 43, No. 1: 58–63.
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Aker, S.L. A Minimalist Approach to Baroque Optics. Nexus Netw J 25 (Suppl 1), 231–240 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-023-00663-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-023-00663-x