Serendipity: Zurich Pointcloud Video

Abstract

Curating the Zurich with Point Cloud Video Animations. The Wahlfach Serendipity will investigate various sites in Zurich through the point cloud model archive available at the Chair of Prof. Christophe Girot. Students will select specific sites and the corresponding material in the archive to create short audiovisual animations.

Objective

The goal of the Serendipity Wahlfach is to enable students to develop skills in point cloud modelling integrating both sound and video techniques. Students will learn digital modelling together with sound and video techniques at the Media Lab of the Chair of Prof. Girot. This will allow them to select, imagine and present selected environments in short videos. The video installations will be assessed for their capacity to reveal the intricate complexity of the urban realm in Zürich. Through the use of precise modeling techniques based on laser-scanned data, students will learn to move iteratively towards a final video proposal of the site they have chosen that will compound topography, infrastructure and architecture. The final works will be part of a larger D-ARCH event combining video works from different periods ranging from the 1970’s until today. It will strengthen student’s knowledge about digital and video approaches while still considering the broader socio-ecological context of Zurich’s underground.

Content

The Department of Architecture at the ETH through the Media Lab and LVML represents one of the longest standing laboratory in video and virtual representation in architecture in Europe. The question of environmental representation in landscape and architecture is still a burning question at the heart of a rapidly changing education. The capacity to visualize and assess both what is above ground and what is underground is going to grow in significance, as urban settlements become more concerned with the physical reality to which they belong. This new approach to the underground modelling of existing buildings is opening new possibilities in contemporary architectural thinking. It addresses directly the capacity of the city of Zurich to cope with and accept its own underground realm. As a result, the underground realm revealed by student videos through selected point cloud models will reinforce the sense of a new reality to be tackled and integrated. Many of the underground realms constructed by our predecessors where not originally meant to be looked-at or or to be understood as objects of aesthetic consideration. Most of these functional spaces were meant to be burried below the urban fabric and forgotten. The Wahlfach Serendipity will challenge the dominant attitude that has sought to hide the underground away from sight for so long. It will give students the opportunity to produce a video installation that will integrate the underground in a broader framework of architectural acceptance. The video installations will open the debate about existing underground structures and their meaning in contemporary society This Wahlfach will propose a series of short workshop in digital modelling methods, video and sound, that will be adapted to the point cloud archival material at hand at the Media -Lab. The intention is to develop navigation skills in modelling that will be reflected in the videos. This will be achieved through the enhanced the capabilities of 3D point cloud modelling and design at the LVML (Landscape Modelling and Visualizing Laboratory). The individual videos may draw from a combination of navigational methods to find the best adaptive solutions. These tools will be supported by the Media Lab team that will provide feedback and support in the video capture, analysis and visualizing processes. The Zurich underground video scenarios developed by the students will be regularly assessed and improved in their performance and feasibility. These new underground video installations will be integrated in a larger event at HIL covering 50 years of video teaching at D-ARCH. The philosophy of the serendipity Wahlfachis is to build on the strengths of the current archival material at hand and to reveal aspects of the underground still to be discovered and enhanced. The Wahlfach will aim at bridging the realms of architectural design and media, by promoting novel ways that will transform our vision and understanding of the Zurich underground.

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