Date of Graduation

5-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Architecture

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Architecture

Advisor/Mentor

Lickwar, Pheobe

Committee Member/Reader

Terry, Laura

Committee Member/Second Reader

Jacobus, Frank

Abstract

This study is to explore the potential of photography and post processing strategies to be much more involved in the architectural design process as an additional tool for recording, thinking, analyzing, and diagramming. This study is not to undermine hand sketching on site. It is a study to expand the limits of our visual thinking with a tool that helps us see. Why use photography? Vision is arguably the most important sense to humans. Although subjective, photography records accurate information of a specific view in a specific place at a specific time. It captures both spatial and formal details and relationships that solely looking or drawing by hand may never capture. It allows one to really study a place about a specific view at a specific time, even after that time has passed. Also, today’s digital technology involving images and imaging allow for very quick manipulation, abstraction, and editing in order to increase an understanding of a place through an image. For the purpose of this study, I have chosen a site on the south side of Lake Fayetteville in Fayetteville, AR. Accessed by a biking/hiking trail, this site provides a dam, peninsula, steep grade changes, and lots of trees, water, and sky. This exploration of place was taken and is currently taking place during the winter of 2013 and spring of 2014. The way in which I am conducting this study involves a lot of time on site, a lot of walking, and a lot of looking. The experience and act of creating an image is very much part of this learning process. I do my best to frame attributes of the site that speak of its identity and its power. I try to highlight the key aspects that could be most influential to an architectural design decision. The images are then organized and filtered according to content, composition, and quality. I cull any that I know I will not use. The images that are of use are then opened in Photoshop for operation. The photographs are observed, analyzed, and dissected into abstractions of the separate elements of the site and of the photography. These isolated elements allow for a clarification and discovery of formal and spatial ideas and relationships that are embedded in the place. This further abstraction is a visual analysis that projects diagrammatic forms and relationships that can easily relate and influence an architectural design project.

Keywords

photography; architectural design; Lake Fayetteville; Photoshop

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