This is another short video I made about the feeling of my Wellesley site in Morton Park. 

Thesis Prep 2 - Site: Wellesley’s Morton Park

Thesis Prep 2 - Updates + Site Criteria

Question:

How can the fundamentals of surrealism, as manifested in filmmaking, be translated into a way of thinking about spatial experiences and architectural design? 

Claim/Hypothesis:

By using surrealist filmmaking techniques, architectural spaces will intertwine the real and the surreal, that is the physical and the mental, to the point where the user combines both realities into one.

(Both the real and fantasy are valid ways of viewing the world, and should be equally considered. Unifying the two.) 

Definition of Surrealism by founders:

Andre Breton:

Although interior reality and external reality are in the “process of unification, or finally becoming one,” Breton makes clear that these “forces” don’t act on each other “simultaneously” or even as a “contradiction” to one another, but rather they act “one after another, in a systematic manner, allowing us to observe their reciprocal attraction and interpenetration” so that we can finally perceive that they “become one and the same thing.” 

Matta:

Matta quickly took to automatism, which he defined as the ability to “read at the speed of events … the irrational and rational run parallel and can send sparks into each other and light the common road.”

Surrealist Films Under Investigation

Luis Bunuel

            Un Chien Andalou (with Dali) (1929)

            L’Age D’or (1930)

            The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

            The Obscure Object of Desire (1977)

David Lynch

            Eraserhead (1977)

Blue Velvet (1986)

            Lost Highway (1997)

            Mulholland Drive (2001)

            Inland Empire (2006)

Peter Greenaway

            The Belly of an Architect (1987)

            The Cook The Thief His Wife & her Lover (1989)

Alfred Hitchock

            Spellbound (1945)

Stanley Kubrick

            Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

            A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Michael Haneke

            Funny Games (1997)

The White Ribbon (2009)

 Site Criteria:

A place with a past, element of time.  

Underground or partially dug into site (topography).

Elements of dark and light.

Distant noises. (train?)

Urban. (Existing structure?)

Path/Sequence