Section - a Drawing/ and a Movie

Former student of mine, Mike Stopka presents us also with the familiar section drawing; in this case to scale, with exact dimensions and placement of windows and doors and with appropriate wall thicknesses, yet suddenly a video window appears animating the static drawing with the activities of the user within the space. As we watch, we see and hear the user moving from one domestic activity to another as he crosses from space to space within the drawing and across the section cut. At points, we are zoomed into the video leaving the drawing as it exists the frame of the document. This document shows the potential of creating documents where we can be immersed into a story held within ( a movie) while being in an architectural document. In this case, the section-cut fluctuates between being a drawing and being a movie while being both. In this drawing/movie the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the place are presented in their intimate relationship.

Sections - Dissection of Time / Space

In "Living Section" like in a conventional section-cut drawing, we are able to view and understand the adjacencies of spaces, their configurations and relative proportions, etceteras yet more importantly because of the ability of the video camera to record activities in time, we are able to understand the fluctuation of programs that are happening across this section of the city over a period of time.

"Living Section" was done by my student Christopher Lanzisiera in a seminar/studio called Notation A/V taught at the University of Michigan.
View Living Section here:


Notation A/V