An Architecture of the Cineplastic

Preface
‘With the notion of duration entering as a constitutive element into the conception of space, we will easily imagine an art of ‘Cineplastic’ blossoming which would be no more than an ideal architecture…’ --Elie Faure ‘de la cineplastique’, 1922

Film has been engaged in rich creative dialogue with architecture since its inception. Architecture’s endless collection of styles and periods have fueled the dramaturgical side of film, while cinema has served as a field of experimentation for architects, providing exploration of innovative new styles and utopian, larger-than-life visions of the future. Yet, recent advances in digital technology and their resulting conceptual leaps promise to take this link beyond these thematic and visual references.  The migration of software platforms between the fields and the resulting cross-pollination of spatial/temporal modes of perception make Faure’s challenge more provocative than ever, while also providing the means to create a subjective architecture of time—cineplastic architecture.

Dynamic perception
The architecture we create cannot be separated from the means by which we represent, and thereby evaluate, it during the many steps from inception to realization.  Thus significant design advances hinge on a retooling of our methods.  While other arts blossomed in the twentieth century by integrating time and motion in their media (painting, literature), architecture’s dependence on projective geometry as a common design language caused it to lag behind.  

Plan, section and elevation, are static projections promoting an inert notion of space within the constraints of Euclidean geometry. Yet our perception is never static, but dynamic; it is through our wandering eyes, scanning the sensations of color, proportion and rhythm that we read and define space.  While architects have constantly sought to integrate film’s scenographic aspects in their work, it is only with advanced digital modeling that this has become a possibility.
 
Capturing time
One can trace early attempts from Lawrence Halprin’s combination of motion and music notation into his system of ‘Mo-tation’ in the 1960s to Le Corbusier’s and Bernard Tschumi’s adaptation of storyboarding techniques.  Although they do accommodate elements of time, such techniques remain at a photographic level, breaking the fluidity of time into keyframes arranged along a set trajectory.  To answer Faure’s call for a truly cineplastic architecture, we must seek techniques which allow for a continuous, real-time evaluation of space overlapping digital and real works along multiple pathways. 

New Cineplastic Frontiers
It is at the melding point between architecture, video gaming, and film design / production that cineplastic design qualities are beginning to emerge.  This paper presents as evidence  a substantial section highlighting the practitioners and methods pioneering these trends: 
- Parametric solutions to anticipate / accommodate future users (Reiser+Umemoto & Greg Lynn)
- Pre-vis techniques in pre-production design for motion pictures and applicability for architectural design (director: David Fincher)
- Video game graphic engines adapted for film use (directors: James Cameron & Bob Zemeckis)
- Game engines used as integral design step by architectural offices (4D design)
- Speculative future use of above techniques in architecture
