Palimpsest and the Computational Environment

Abstract

Spatial technologies such as LiDAR scanning are still in their infancy, yet they are quickly becoming part of our daily lives through their employment as sensory systems in self-driving cars, aerial scans of entire cities and landscapes, or portable terrestrial units. As the increasingly becomes a lens through which we view the physical world, there is a greater need for designers to explore the opportunities inherent in this technology. The process of scanning produces a highly accurate spatial model of an existing space, providing a simulacrum of the physical world. This 3-dimensional collage contains not only the banal information of the architectural environment, but includes artifacts of use and inhabitation. This detritus captured in the scans serves as witness marks, or physical manifestations of human intervention whether accidental, incidental or intentional. This project explores the human interaction on the built environment through a forensic study of the present condition of the Metropole Building, a historic site in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. The spatial data of the existing conditions gathered through scanning becomes the foundation for a designed intervention. Antecedents in art and theory are used to provide a framework for the design of a series of architectural interventions into the existing space that form a continual conversation between the building’s history and inherent memory inscribed on the architecture.