Clara Journal, Issue 10
Theme: Intermediality in architecture: representations and aesthetics of reflexivity
Abstract: This article explores the intermedial dialogues between environmental models (wind tunnels, water tables, and filling boxes) and photographs of these models. I speculate on how photographs of the models make comprehensible some of the seemingly incomprehensible scales and material complexities associated with the atmospheric constructions that underlie the climate crisis. I illustrate how environmental models can be read at multiple scales: the univocal scale of the instrument as a tectonic artifact, the scale set by the architectural model on the test bench, and the ambiguous scale of the controlled space of air and water flow. Each scale offers new vantage points for thinking about architecture’s many atmospheric dialogues between inhabitants, buildings, instruments, architectural models, and the larger world in which we are immersed. Photography facilitates reading across scales, allowing for design perspectives that are not possible outside the mediating lens of the camera. Fundamentally, I suggest that intermedial dialogues between source model and abstract photography fuse two conceptions of “atmosphere” by first following and then disrupting scientific flow visualization protocols.