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ADS12: Sight/Seeing

Frederick Ken Sheppard

Ken Sheppard is a London-based designer working predominantly in the field of architecture, focussing on forms of perception as a driver for the design of the built environment. Prior to completing his postgraduate studies at the RCA, he studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture before working at a number of notable architectural practices in London.

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Degree Details

School of Architecture

ADS12: Sight/Seeing

The project, titled "Real-ising Eternity", explores the possibilities of a new formal language for the physical realm, in a time when the boundaries between it and the digital are becoming increasingly blurred. The exploration is driven by research into changes to perception, brought about by digital tools and interfaces that are ever-permeating our physical and social rituals. In particular the project focuses on notions of affordance, and how such fundamental understandings can translate and mutate between digital and physical contexts. Our growing dependence on screen-based media to experience the world around us is examined, defining new values that arise at material, object and spatial levels. The developments of such research and analysis inform an architectural methodology that is applied to the design of a highrise building, concluding the project with an exaggerated aesthetic that comments on the dependence on digital tools within architectural practice and contemporary society as a whole.

Materialising Digital Affordance - Samsung OS Default Icon #01 — Icon #01 is digital affordance that represents an image based archive. The generation of a third dimension to the affordance encodes a multitude of other information, obscuring the original iconographic affordance. Only from a specific view can this original digital affordance be rediscovered.

Materialising Digital Affordance - Samsung OS Default Icon #02 — Icon #02 is digital affordance that represents customisation of a digital interface. The generation of a third dimension to the affordance encodes a multitude of other information, obscuring the original iconographic affordance. Only from a specific view can this original digital affordance be rediscovered.

Materialising Digital Affordance - Samsung OS Default Icon #03 — Icon #03 is digital affordance that represents engaging interaction with a digital interface. The generation of a third dimension to the affordance encodes a multitude of other information, obscuring the original iconographic affordance. Only from a specific view can this original digital affordance be rediscovered.

Materialising Digital Affordance - Samsung OS Default Icons #01-03 in Terra Cotta — Through the realisation of digital affordance, a multitude of other information is encoded into an object, obscuring the original 2 dimensional form. Only from a specific view can this original digital affordance be rediscovered.

Materialising Digital Affordance - Samsung OS Default Icons #01-03 in Soap — Through the realisation of digital affordance, a multitude of other information is encoded into an object, obscuring the original 2 dimensional form. Only from a specific view can this original digital affordance be rediscovered.

Encoding Townscape “Iconography” into Architectural Form - A Site Plan — The way we experience urban environments is becoming increasingly two dimensional. The view of the architecture from key points across the city becomes a methodology to inform the architectural form through the realisation of this new digital affordance.

Institute of Future Affordance - Ground Floor Plan — The methodology of urban projection results in a spatial logic where programmatic spaces intercept one another, creating unexpected dialogue between various functions of the building.

Institute of Future Affordance - 11th Floor Plan — The methodology of urban projection results in a spatial logic where programmatic spaces intercept one another, creating unexpected dialogue between various functions of the building.

Institute of Future Affordance - 36th Floor Plan — The methodology of urban projection results in a spatial logic where programmatic spaces intercept one another, creating unexpected dialogue between various functions of the building.

Institute of Future Affordance - Fragment Model — A fragment model study explores the non-linear relationship between programmatic areas, enabled by the boolean projection process that slices volumes through a conventional high-rise structure.

Institute of Future Affordance - Unrolled Elevation — The deliberate distribution of programme has afforded a public route through the building, allowing visitors an immersion into the organisation’s activities along the way. Not only a circulation tool, the route weaves the seemingly chaotic volumes within the architecture into a sequential, ordered experience.

Institute of Future Affordance - Interior View, Collective Space — The materiality and form of the architecture is driven by a methodology that realises digital affordance and data, yet results in a tactile and inherently physical environment that responds to weathering, pattination and vegetation growth.

AbstractionAffordanceDigitalIconographyInteractionInterfaceMaterialityPerceptionPhysicalityProjectionsightseeingWeathering

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