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arsitektur.net
2009 vol. 3 no. 3
Anthropomorphic Translation as a Way to Achieve Geometry:
Simplifying Things to Its Graphical Essence
Annisa Seffiliya
Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava is an architect and engineer who paints, sculpts, designs
furniture, and solves mathematical equations for fun. From the age of 16 to 30,
he studied art, engineering, architecture, and math. After two or three years in
professional practice, he won the competition to design the Stadelhofen Railway
Station in Zurich. In this project all the traits of Calatrava’s personal style emerged
fully formed–the dynamic geometries and the expressive structural elements.
His inspirations might range from Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK to Oscar
Niemeyer, Felix Candela, and Antoni Gaudí–but it owes absolutely nothing to the
movements, styles, and debates of the early 1980s, when it was designed. “My
formation has been very autodidactic,” he says (Moore, 2001).
Design Concept: Anthropomorphic Geometry Translation
Anthropomorphic itself, literally means:
1:described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes
2:ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman things (Webster Online Dictionary,
2009)
Anthropomorphic translation had been commonly used in architecture:
“Some instances of the human body in architecture and fragmented theories
have been explored by Marcus Frings (1998) and Richard Sennett (1994), both
of whom use a historical perspective. An overall anthropological perspective is
lacking and no basic theory concerning this discipline in relation to the usage
of the human body in architectural and urban space has yet been formulated.
That is why we have chosen to explore the widespread usage of the human
body in architecture by presenting a great number of cross-cultural examples. As
the human body has inspired architecture in many ways and both the body and
architecture are multifaceted, we have to introduce a classification to simplify the
complex reality. We consider architecture to be related to layout and construction,
to building, ward and city. The body implies measurements, proportions,
symmetry, external form, internal forms and forces, gender, posture, senses and
emotions. In relation to each other, these dimensions of architecture and the
human body lead to a typology with a multitude of cells. In order to simplify this
matter, we have reduced these complexities to a matrix of six cells by relating
architecture specified as building and city to the human body comprised of form,
representation and impression.” (Nas&Brakus, 2003)
In relation of this concept of anthropomorphic translation with architecture to
Santiago Calatrava, another online literature stated,
“Calatrava was intrigued with structures found in nature,
particularly moving structures. His dissertation research
explored questions about “modeling the movement of parts
of complete structures and representation of intricate curved
surfaces”(Hallgreen, 2007).
Hallgreen also stated that he then broke the problem into two components:
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1. Modeling geometrical transformation of 3 dimensional frames into more compact
arrangements;
2. Articulating the mechanical connectors in the joints required for the sequential
transformation, abstracting aspects of strength of materials.
By definition, I summarize that anthropomorphic geometry translation is a work of
translating a form of human, either human attributes or human movements, into
a geometrical shape. The method itself had been used in architecture in many
ways. Calatrava uses this method for his designs combined with his background
as structural engineer, creating a sculptural structure in his architecture.
Case Study: L’ Hemispheric Planetarium
Launched in 1998, L’ Hemispheric Planetarium is a part of City of Arts and
Sciences complex in Calatrava’s native city, Valencia. The complex itself consists
of 5 integrated buildings(Valencia, 2005):
• The Hemispheric Planetarium. A Planetarium which on their hemispheric screen
of 900 square meters, three different audio-visual spectacles are alternated:
astronomical phenomena in the planetarium, films in cinema IMAX, and
projections with laser.
• Príncipe Felipe Sciences Museum, inaugurated at the end of the 2000, the
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Museum of Sciences is a spectacular building of 40,000 square meters dedicated
to approach the science to the visitors. The museum objective is the spreading
of science and technology, so, it animates the visitors to participate actively in
the experiments. It has an approximated surface of 40,000 square meters. It has
three floors of 8000m2, each one. This museum has been designed to lodge
thematic exhibitions related to science and the technology.
• L’ Umbracle. It’s a garden and a stroll viewpoint conceived like “a balcony
towards the future”. It has 320 meters in length, and has 55 metallic arcs on
which climbing plants grow. In addition to the climbing plants, 50 native floral
species of the Valencian community have been planted, surrounded by palms,
orange trees, shrubs of Valencia, ground cover plants, aromatic plants, etc. The
most abundant species is the bougainvillea, in all its varieties (violet, red, orange,
yellow and white).
• L’ Oceanographic Park, the greater marine park of Europe, is located next to
L’ Hemispheric. In their interior, the main marine ecosystems of the world are
reproduced: Atlantic, The Mediterranean, The Arctic, Tropical. It was inaugurated
in 2002 and it has a surface of 110,000 square meters. The volume of water of its
aquariums is of 42 million liters.
• Arts Palacea science museum, a huge concrete pergola with extensive
landscaping. It is placed in the middle of a vast pond and the reflection of the
building in the water creates the complete image of an eye. The planetarium
globe is placed in the middle of the elliptical shaped building, constructed of
concrete, glass and steel, and can be seen as the ‘pupil’ of the big ‘eye’.
Geometry Analysis
Achieving Geometry
As other Calatrava’s projects, L’ Hemispheric Planetarium also achieve its
geometry through the anthropomorphic translation. The basic structure is inspired
by the eye, that’s why L’ Hemispheric Planetarium is also known as The Eye of
Wisdom, reflecting the human eye that always open the world of science.
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Due to unavailability of complete sketch of L’ Hemispheric Planetarium
design process, I summarize that Calatrava did some steps to translate the
anthropomorphic eye into possible built geometry:
1. Pointing the anthropomorphic eye to its essential view, 2-dimensionally. He
sketched the eye with its contextual presence.
2. Simplify the shape into its most important rule and shape; redraw by lines,
curve, and other simple Euclidian geometry. By this step, he analyze the graphical
essence of an eye: the eye-ball; shaped a circle, a lens through which the eye
can observe things; shaped a narrower circle, a pupil which gives the eye its
character; shaped a radiant circle cycling the lens, and two curves with different
curving points that shaped the eyelid and placed the eye at it,
3. Thinking about how the ‘message’ of the eye can be noticed in a simple ‘built’
geometry. By this step, he might have been thinking about how the building will
shape its 3-dimensional body.
4. Designing its 3-dimensional built shape. By this step, he just got out of the
contextual eye shape. He designed its geometry by his structural mechanism
acquaintance, regarding to the step 2 and 3. This shape might be influenced by
the building’s purpose concerning to a definite geometrical shape to accomplish
its function. This step will be the most complicated step. Not just designed the
geometry itself, but he also designed the space in the geometry and other related
things so that the building can say his message; lighting, space organization, etc.
Calatrava might not do these step by step. He might either do one step with the
next step contemplating in his imagination in mind, or do the steps disloyally. He
might have stated the building’s purpose – a planetarium – which means there
will be a need to obtain a dome – defining a dome-shape or a half globe – then
exploring the anthropomorphic shape containing the shape possibly constructed
to be a dome – that is solved by an eye.
Geometry and The Space Created in
In architecture, geometry will be related to the space which is created by it, since
architecture essentially dealing with space. Now, how about the space created in
L’ Hemispheric Planetarium? Does it functionally accomplish its purpose by the
geometry? Does the form follow function or the function follow form?
To find the answer, firstly we had to know the space programming of the building.
I simply observe it by its drawing.
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From the drawing, we can presume that the building purposed for a planetarium
as the main program, seen from its dome shape, suitable shape for the referred
acoustics and vista for a planetarium.
‘A planetarium is a theatre built for presenting shows about astronomy
and the night sky. Planetariums typically use a large dome shape
for the projection screen, with inclined chairs for comfortable viewing
“straight up”. A large projector in the center of the dome creates the
scene, using a number of movable projectors projecting the images of
stars or planets onto the screen. The various projectors are geared to
provide an accurate relative motion of the sky, and the entire system
can be set to display the sky at any point in time.
…
Today many planetariums are moving to a fully digital projection
system, in which a single large projection camera is used to create
any scene provided to it from a computer. This gives the operator
tremendous flexibility in showing not only the night sky, but any other
image they wish.
The term “planetarium” can also be used to describe the projector
itself, or other devices to illustrate the solar system, like a computer
simulation or an orrery.
A planetarium is unlike most theatres in that the best seats are at the
rear, instead of the front.’ (Knowledgerush, 2009)
Anthropomorphic Translation to Simplify Things into its Graphical Essence
Anthropomorphic translation has been known and used for many purposes. I will
focus my observation to the simplest steps for me, the first and the second step I
stated. Here, I discover that the simplest translation is also found in another human
forms or human representation things: human sketches or human 2-dimensional
imaging, or could be called manga, and also Barbie doll.
Look at the drawing below. When we draw human figure, we record the prior
knowledge of human body and its ‘normal’ proportion: human has a head above
the body and the body itself that assembled together by a neck. Then in the body,
human has 2 arms and 2 foots, that assembled by a joint.
We can use the step 1 and 2 to make a basic structure of a human body. Having
the basic structure, we have made a generalization which can be used in imaging
all of the human sketches, even Barbie doll. The posture of each human will not
be the same, there will be the thin one, fat one, bigger, smaller, taller, short ones,
and so on, but we have the simplified geometry of a human which is the essence
of a human body. Every human, no matter how thin, fat, big, small, tall, and short
he is, will have the same simplified Euclidean geometry. This simplified-Euclidean
Geometry is used by mangakas to create their manga character.
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The first picture is the representation of step 1. When figuring a human, we will
have a prior knowledge about it with all the proportions. But I will not describe the
proportion; human will have a head, arms, legs, and his body. By this step, we
sketch the human with all the information we observe.
The second is the representation of step 2, when we start to filter the essence
of the information we stated in our sketch before. We may be doing this step
severally, until we have the rest, which consists of simple Euclidean geometry:
lines, curves, triangle, circle, which their absence might lose the human body’s
information. The output may be called the basic structure of human body, or a
Simplified Euclidean Body Geometry.
Look at the Simplified-Euclidean Body Geometry (SEBG) – the way I named it –
of the human body and compare with all the people you look today. We can play
stretch and pull the Simplified-Euclidean Body Geometry to find which stretched
form fits them. It’s not about how proportional they are. It’s about the character
they are made, due to the uniqueness of their SEBG. Men are usually has a wider
shoulder than girls have. So their SEBG will be fits if we stretch the shoulder line
horizontally. Furthermore, one can have a stretched-vertically only on their head,
so that they will have a long face; another may have the all-stretched horizontally.
Then how about Barbie? They don’t look proportional, because their Simplified
Euclidean Geometry is too much stretched vertically, only on their feet. Isn’t it just
as simple as a fun-play? Let’s observe you or your friend’s SEBG!
Reference
[1] Hallgreen, Linda (2007). Inspiration Presentation Paper. http://archgraphics.
pbwiki.com/f/Hallgren+-+Insp+pres+Paper.pdf
[2] Knowledgerush.com (2003). Planetarium. http://knowledgerush.com/kr/
encyclopedia/Planetarium/
[3] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2009). Anthropomorphic. http://www.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anthropomorphic
[4] Moore, Rowan (2001). Building Bridges, Skyscrapers and Ground Zero.
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0601/cal/index.html
[5] Nas, Peter J.M. and Chantal Brakus (2003). The Dancing House: Instances
of The Human Body in City and Architecture.
[6] http://www.leidenuniv.nl/fsw/nas/pdf/
NasBrakusThedancinghousewithpicturesold27-10-2003.pdf
[7] Valencia, Web. (2005). Valencia: City of Arts and Sciences. http://www.webvalencia.com/valencia-photos-cityofartsandsciences.htm
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