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Review by Jose Atienza
The digital “fly-thru” has become a clichéd staple
in contemporary architectural representation, attempting to
simulate “real” spatial experience but frequently
retreating towards the oft-repeated linear “dolly shot”
sweeping through virtual rooms from an elevated, isolated, and
singular viewpoint. Unfortunately, the technique fails to optimize
and fully engage our senses and the potential for digital media to
read or generate space in more meaningful and significant ways.
Fade to Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner who, in contrast, provide
long overdue research and analysis of computer representation as
cinema and critical tools in their book Cinemetrics: Architectural
Drawing Today. Because our drawing tools and mechanisms have
changed away from the pencil and drafting table towards the
computer, the authors argue for a fundamental shift in the way we
operate or think through representation and its construction by
digital means and introduce a “new type of drawing
system.” McGrath and Gardner celebrate and advocate a
multi-dimensional approach through a process that integrates
perception, movement, time, social theory, and ecology. Defining a
framework that draws from cinematic techniques, they present a
digital world mediated by a sensorial, responsive, conscious,
integrated and networked interface.
Intended as a textbook and primary resource on the subject, the
book is organized in chapters that alternate between examples from
cinema and architecture. Film and building are paired to
demonstrate and highlight techniques such as framing and
“immobile cuts.” By focusing on domesticity as a subject
in the chosen film and building selections, the authors
contextualize our experience of everyday life, breaking down
moments of familiar daily events and rituals into cinematic frames
that explore and reveal a series of relationships that define our
perception of the world as related to social and spatial
constructs. Central to this process is the capture of spatial and
sensorial information and the transformation of our experience from
“perspectival picture making,” towards “cybernetic
duration” where the human sensory-motor takes over to frame
“flowing matter.” Various exercises are interspersed that
allow the reader to experiment and become familiar with the topics
or techniques described, slowly moving away from traditional modes
of perception towards the Cinemetric approach. Here, space-time is
revealed through an intelligent lens that is tuned to the sensory
motor schema, is non-linear, and is integrated within the
contemporary condition of information, inputs, and feedback.
Although the narrative tends to become a bit immersed within its
own cinematic jargon, causing one (at least those who are
unfamiliar with digital or cinematic technical terms) to
continually reference the glossary provided, the text is generally
well structured and methodical in its trajectory towards a new
understanding of digital representation. Summaries at the beginning
and end of all lessons allow and invite readers to move back and
forth in a non-linear way through the book to customize the
learning process. In addition to these “jump cuts,”
McGrath and Gardner engage the reader through the physical handling
of the book by positioning graphics and diagrams that require one
to continually re-orient pages around the images. While the
graphics and diagrams are striking and richly layered, the overall
understanding of the subject is compromised by its limitation as a
series of static images. A CD or DVD of digital animations might
complement the book in future editions to fully demonstrate the
potential of the system.
While not so much a technical manual but a guide and framework of
applied theory, the digital mapping explored in Cinemetrics
provides a significant and notable first step in truly
understanding the implications of new media that require a
fundamental shift in the way that we represent space. McGrath and
Gardner help us to navigate through the understanding of this
complex framing of relationships with sophisticated techniques that
transform our actual perception and provide the basis for exploring
how this technology can inspire, generate, and construct spatial
experience—the architectural holy grail of the digital
age.
Jose Atienza, LEED AP, is a senior designer at William
McDonough + Partners and a lecturer in architecture at the
University of Virginia School of Architecture.
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