3D Portraits: Architecture Meets Animation
VR: Exactly. On a day-to-day basis, we forget the gap between what’s happening in the computer and what’s happening outside. One of the projects we did for Sharp was a large-scale CNC [computer numerical control] sculpture. We created the form visually, and then it was milled using CNC. But the whole thing was so digital that what existed on our screen was the same as what ended up in the gallery. Even when it doesn’t get extracted into the built environment, to us it still feels tangible because we’re so used to working in an all-digital space.
Are you doing any physical models, Michel? Or is it mostly digital, or a combination? What do you prefer personally?
MR: I will never stop doing physical models. We do a lot of physical models and a lot of 3D models. We’re trying to get a new 3D printer so we can do more things with CNC. If the shapes are complex, it takes a lot of time to pass from digital to physical models. We’re trying to shorten that time by printing them directly off the 3D model.
VR: Oh yeah, it’s so great to be able to do that!
MR: Normally you have this façade, or this interior, or this shape, and you pass the 3D model to the company that’s going to build it. But now you don’t even have to pass along the drawings anymore, the typical sections and plans. It’s changing and shifting to a new way of designing and building architecture.
VR: Absolutely. If you don’t have to think of it in terms of 2D drawings, it exists more in the realm of a sculptural object — even if it’s a large-scale building.
MR: Yeah, it’ll definitely make things easier. I’ve been traveling to different countries to lecture, and I meet architects of different nationalities, and we’re all struggling with the same things. We take a long time just doing the drawings so we can move on to the construction site and build the building. It’s crazy. There’s this bureaucratic delay between finishing the drawings and the construction company getting what they need to build the building.
Soon this will become the normal process: They’ll get our 3D drawings, put them in their computer, have the pieces cut in the field, and assemble them. Already this is starting to happen. It’s like you were saying, Vivian. If it’s already there in 3D, why bring it down to 2D and then recreate it in 3D again?
VR: Yes — it’s a complete parallel to what we are doing. If architecture can skip the 2D-back-to-3D process, then it becomes more of a seamless experience. You stay within the digital realm, and then maybe just go into CNC, or straight into the built form. That’s why I don’t see such a separation between the worlds of media and architecture. It feels like they’re going to collapse into one.
At the same time, you are still dealing with making the building stand up, which is a separate issue. But being able to extract your design into a 3D form makes so much more sense than the traditional ways of drawing it.
Michel Rojkind
MR: I’m always trying to rethink things and see what’s coming. What the future might look like when the work you guys are doing with design blends with architecture. Maybe the CG or animation implementations that we have on buildings will not only be on screens. Maybe you’ll see the physical buildings moving somehow…
VR: It’s what we keep calling “convergence.” Back in graduate school at Columbia, Jesse and I did a thesis called “The Blue House,” on the intersection of digital and physical space. It looked at how blue- or green-screen technology, which is really important in Hollywood films, could be applied to architecture. For example, you could bring together different spaces and people or environments in a new, hybrid space. What you’re talking about, that intersection where the whole building becomes the media itself, is definitely going to happen. I don’t know exactly when we’ll see it, but people are certainly starting to think that way.
MR: I think you and I need to get a grant together so we can take all this a step further. We can have buildings that eventually grow bigger, or extend limbs that are made with digital environments rather than the physical ones.
VR: It does seem to be going that way. As you said, it’s all about the desire to make it real. Bringing along the right technologies and the right thought processes to make it work. I don’t doubt that it’s going to happen!
