Photography | context & ubiquitousness

Site: Nay Pyi Daw | 2013 AD

"Everyone is a literalist when it comes to photographs." 

- Susan Sontag

The second lens is photography and it is used because it is the only way we have to see and understand Nay Pyi Daw due to government secrecy. The exploration of photography as a discipline started with a simple diagram of five different consecutive images of Andy Warhol showing varying degrees context. The more you zoom out the more information that is gathered and it shows the important of context, but also that a photograph is not a truth or a fact – merely a tool whose truth is highly reliant on cropping. All information in a photograph is a relative truth and changeable.

Since with Nay Pyi Daw we only have the visual façade I started by noticing the similarities between occidental and oriental building traditions. Nay Pyi Daw was more than merely a scaling up of the Pagan aesthetic as I had initially thought- more complex building histories were being referenced throughout.

Gallery of Nay Pyi Daw photo collages : click through

Due to the ubiquitous nature of photography in this day and age, and how now one does not need to have been to a place to have seen it already, a series of layered collages were created highlighting certain visual similarities across various building traditions with Nay Pyi Daw. These images sit side by side and are cropped in order to explicitly reference roof pitches, frieze heights, column or pilaster spacing, and archway repetitions among the photographs. Later larger collages were then created to show how Nay Pyi Daw could potentially be craft from a myriad of other buildings. 

Photography | explorations

While photographs were initially the first way to understanding Nay Pyi Daw eventually a point came when a more rigorous analysis of the buildings was needed. However, questions soon arose on how to take loose snap shots and conform them to the traditional notion of what an architectural elevation is? How would one know what was truth and not distortion merely by looking at a photograph and creating an elevation from it? Certain facts are known, but many are still ambiguous. The complex nature of the building traditions being referenced on the façade of Nay Pyi Daw helped make the link between looking towards at first Greek geometric systems as a way to initially construct an elevation of Nay Pyi Daw. Greek geometric systems was initially the best starting point, not only because it is the best known geometric orderings system in Western architectural history, but it is also brings Nay Pyi Daw into a much larger building tradition of adopting Greek and Roman style architecture as a means to represent state Democratic architecture.

Four different geometries over lapped with the resulting elevations to show varying degrees of difference between all four elevations created.

Using four traditional geometric systems with specific buildings as reference points to systematically construct and building four different elevations, each with their own varying results and levels of truthfulness.

Each of these geometries used to create the various elevations are intrinsically coupled with a systematic way to create plans from that information. Four explorative plans were then generated by using the traditional geometries also used to create the elevations. These are four potential plans that could be a plan for Nay Pyi Daw if one chooses to view Nay Pyi Daw via one of these traditional geometries. Four layered diagrams were then created and over laid on top of a bas relief plan in order to show the various layers that were used in order to create these plans. 

Gallery of Precedent geometries : click through

Temple of Poseidon precedent geometry with new plan for Parliament Building 1

Cologne Cathedral precedent geometry with new plan Parliament Building 1

Vedic precedent geometry with new plan for Main Parliament Building

Temple of Poseidon precedent geometry with new plan for Main Parliament Building

Photography | memento II

These mementos take the form of a series of postcards written between a future visitor to Nay Pyi Daw once it has become just like another state capital: a tourist attraction. Written in the style of Italio Calivino’s story-telleresque voice of Marco Polo in “Imagined Cities”, these postcards aim to capture the initial means of proliferating photography to the masses that has now, in the 21st century, gone into hyper-drive with social networking and internet. However, postcards will always have a more intrinsic connection to the places we’ve been and seen than any digital photograph due not so much because of the image, but because of the medium itself. Each postcard not only has the handwritten qualities lost in our digital era, but also the haptic and random qualities of something much touched and used. These postcards call into question our relationship to images and places that through our voyeuristic consumption may one day make into icons. 

Photography | bibliography

Brunes, Tons. Ancient Geometry and Its Uses. Vol. I - II, Copenhagen: International Science
Publishers, 1967, Print

Braise, Michel Francois. The Photograph: A Social History. London, UK: Thames and
Hudson, 1966, Print

Calvino, Italio. Invisible Cities. New York City, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1974, Print

Lawlor, Robert. Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice. London, England: Thames and
Hudson, 1992, Print

Newhall, Beaumont. Latent Image: The Discovery of Photography. Rochester, New York:
George Eastman House, 1967, Print

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others, New York City, New York: Picador, 2003, Print

Stephenson, David. Heavenly Vaults. New York City, New York: Princton Architectural
Press, 2011, Print

Walls, Archie G. Geometry and Architecture in Islamic Jerusalem: A study of the Ashrafiyya.
London, England: Scorpion Publishing Ltd, 1990, Print