pinkcomma in Architect and Architectural Record

Architectural Artifacts

Megan Panzano

Vision and cultural imagination are shaped by how we represent the world. Representations on repeat can perceptually trap us into seeing-only-conventionally. Architectural Artifacts critiques specific limits posed by conventional linear perspective, unlocking different information about the spaces described. The project experiments with the perspective view as an unusual point of origin with architecture as an artifact, or byproduct, of its close read. The exhibit displays three new representational artifacts and their accompanying fresh architectural forms created by pushing perspective’s limits through contemporary tools and new design methodologies. The three dimensionality of the revamped representations establishes new codes of engagement and offers curious perceptual content with real-time effects—their reading intentionally resides between representation and reality, image of a thing or ‘thingness’ itself. The project inverts the trope ‘a room with a view,’ instead designing new views, with rooms.