ann arbor MICHIGAN
University of Michigan
Critic: Jeff HALSTEAD
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Kelvin CHEN: The project is a multistory hotel, trying to integrate some cinematic ideas from the film Rear Window, which is famous for its set design, to explore different visual connections in space.
- Kelvin CHEN, “Hotel.”, Axon Section
- Kelvin CHEN, “Hotel.”, Axon
- Kelvin CHEN, “Hotel.”, Interior Perspective
- Kelvin CHEN, “Hotel.”, Plan
The film is describing the space in the courtyard and beside the windows. The courtyard is surrounded by several different scale buildings around it. They have different systems and overlap with each other. So I borrow the idea and try to create and apply different window systems onto the exterior in different angles, overlapping and shifting their scale, the building facade becomes the kind of reflection of urban context. And I also bring those different folding systems into the interior, which keeps the continuity of the exterior and the interior. So my exterior massing is overlapping and folding different façade systems and mapping onto it. The interior logic is trying to keep the folding systems and carve out the hollow space for courtyards, which are in reference with Rear Window.
Another idea in the film is, in order to make the window as the story board that can show the event clearly, the space behind the window has to be compressed to some extent, so that everything can happen just beside the windows that like a stage. The main actor was sitting beside his own window to watch the show. This is actually a double frame system. Keeping this in mind, I tried to explore different visual connection in the building, not only confine to what the film has shown, but also, apply the logic to compress the space in another way and create more possibilities. So I develop several types of windows in different scales, which shift the perspective angle, bringing the scene into the interior through telescope device and periscope device. The diagram shows different potential of windows in different scales, the largest one can evolve into the occupiable space, others can develop into periscope device and telescope device, which is a way to manipulate the visual sense of space. You can see something happen in some decoherent space from the aperture.
The three courtyards in the hotel can be in reference with Rear Window, which is surrounded by several sides of walls and become the stage for watching. Those apertures are the instrument for observing the events happening in the courtyard.
sP: What or who influenced this project?
KC: The film Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Some works by MILLIØNS, and Oliver Michaels. And of course, my studio advisor, Jeff Halstead.
sP: What were you reading, listening to or watching while developing this project?
KC: Listening to lots of Britpop, and Symphonic metal. Reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
KC: Adam Nathaniel Furman. Eric Owen Moss, Ferdinand Gleinser
