Abstract
In a globalized, digital marketplace, the shaping of the urban metropolis and its architecture finds its invention through the production, marketing, and commodification of images. Beginning in the last century, the power of images in the generation of urban environments, such as New York City, has reached its zenith thanks to proliferating image technologies serving global real estate markets. The concern for architecture, in our contemporary culture-ideology of consumerism, becomes an increasing requirement for the image-ability of vertical architecture, threatening the palpable spatial experience of buildings themselves. Reflecting upon spatio-visual techniques, either past or present, available to architects that prioritize an experiential account of space is worth investigating. While largely considered a historical aesthetic, the eighteenth-century Picturesque may offer contemporary techniques for orchestrating durational, spatio-visual encounters, exemplified at the urban scale in New York’s Central Park. By manipulating the viewer’s movement, perspective, and positioning, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux offer a replicable model for reframing the role of the image in the city. Using John Macarthur’s text “The Picturesque: Architecture, Disgust, and Other Irregularities” to frame a discussion around the function of ‘picture,’ ‘disgust,’ ‘irregularity,’ ‘appropriation,’ and ‘movement’ in the design of Central Park, this investigation proposes a possible transfer of technique from the horizontal axis of the park to New York City’s vertical architecture. Rather than privileging the exterior representation of architectural objects and flattening spatial experience, a vertical picturesque may satisfy the need for image-ability while prioritizing an empirical account of architectural content across time and space.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Image; Picturesque; New York City; Vertical; Central Park
