Projection our Reflection

Projection Our ReflectionChanging The Face 2011 - Pushkinsky Cinema

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“In every country, in every city there is building that has unique emotional meaning for the community. A building with an important public function, controversial design, a great location,

problematic conditions makes it a perfect subject for a global brainstorm about its future.”

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Text Description

Index

• Title

• Narrative Description

• Concept

• Materials

• Goals

Title

Projection Our Reflection




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Narrative Description

A new space was added to the Pushkinsky Cinema Hall.

Not only an interior but also an exterior space, generated within an atmosphere of visual projections and reflections filtered and enriched with

the use of specific, manipulated and advanced materials provided by Dupont®. The regional, geographic and climate context provided the

inspirational base to fulfill our ambition on creating an icon for the MIFF1 in the center of Moscow. Therefore, the incorporation of temperature,

water and the seasonal change it provides, in addition to the poetic inclusion of the historical and cultural background of cinema, theatre and

russian writers to the design concept, generated a dramatic piece of architecture that becomes itself a depth critic on the projected vision and

reflected perception of the Russian People and Russian Culture.

1 Moscow International Film Festival held annually in the Pushkinsky Cinema Hall.




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Concept

The project geographic and climatic context favors the association of water as a natural material in the design concept. This gives the building a

more sustained regional context which is categorized as of extreme conditions and thermal amplitude. The design uses this material in a

controlled combination of infinite distortions, refractions, projections and reflections enhanced with the use of the Dupont® SentryGlas®

Expressions and Butacite® technological marriage and the humanity owned, raw, pure, WATER. This achievement, real or pictorial, reflected or

projected frames represent the past, present and future of the Russian Society and the Art of Cinema in a dual atmosphere between

(respectively) Reality and Fiction.

The design concept defines itself as a new shell, generating interior and exterior space, built with modulated Glass containers (with

projection/reflection capability dependent of the direction it faces) in a parallel offset from the original building. The glass module has a pure,

geometric, triangulated, container like design, embedded in the previous mentioned structural grid. This grid is a direct extrusion of the existent

and original façade composition.

Water acts as a catalyst for the cycled, seasonal change of matter2 due to the temperatures that affects Moscow Weather and symbolizes the

Annual character of the MIFF3 Events in a poetic and infinite loop of changes assuming the symbolic role of the building changed face. Water in

different states of matter (solid and liquid) is an added plastic value. This water fills the façade containers and brings the weather and

geographical context to the conversation with the surroundings. The chosen materials inherit transparency from one another's and brings, with

the correct lightning a kaleidoscope of controlled iconography to the city of Moscow and to the Pushkin Square.

An expected change will happen in the hot month of July when the Winter defrosting process will peak and the city feels its highest precipitation

values of the year. The falling water from the rain will be collected by the façade to an approximate value of 730 L (aprox. When this value is

reached it will over flows the edge of the module and this will act as a controlled waterfall, comparing it to a champagne fountain commonly used

in events and openings emphasizing the festive atmosphere of the events it will hold. This effect is given by the filling and continuous over filling

of rain water in the façade glass modules. That water will be collected by the last module, nearest to the ground, through the matrix support

structure and directed to the Moscow Rain Collection Grid.

In 1929, Dziga Vertov4 started a new approach that “...aimed at creating a truly international language of cinema based on its absolute

separation from the language of theatre and literature”.5 The context of "The film Man with a Movie Camera represents an experimentation in

the cinematic transmission of visual phenomena, without the use of intertitles, without the help of a script, without the help of a theatre. This (...)

is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema - absolute kinography…"6 The editing, the themes

and the core matter of this cinematic representation becomes an art form on its own, liberating this young and dependent pictorial expression,

from its aphasic documental roots and simplistic still capture of sequential frames. The bases to explore new and radical paths where created

for the future cinematographers by releasing to enlightenment the editing techniques and the conceptual freedom of the film theme.

Vertov Projection of 1929 Russian society is a raw portrait of a society and its way of life. He was interested in his country and cultural heritage

but the main focus of the film was the passion of cinematic representation and evolution.

By the same time, Bertolt Brecht7, with his new and avant garde approach, focused on the collective subject and on the collective experience.

Influenced by the formalist Viktor Chklosvky8, he transmitted, firstly, the exploitation of the theatre as the creation of critical aesthetics for

dialectical materialism based on a modernist concern of drama as a medium to achieve the involvement of the play with its audience. This

global and accepted gathering of the two subjects (the play and the audience) in one defining moment (or moments) is similar to Picasso´s

Cubist involvement of time and space with the observer in the work of art. Acting not only as a simple frame but as a montage of isolated

thoughts sequenced by a theme or a point of view, this approach radicalizes the traditional way of thinking that modernists created and brought

to life.

Chklosvky theorized about what we should provide as art. Ranging the debate between providing a vision or a recognition for the object and

placing the value on the process of singularization, on strangeness9. Obscuring and differentiating the apprehension of the object, enhancing

and increasing in an almost orgasmic way the duration of the perception. This, is a filter to enhance the depth of the object, the conscious

2 Water in liquid, solid states due to the oscillating temperatures of the Russian Weather (+25ºC summer -25ºC Winter). 3 Moscow International Film Festival held annually in the Pushkinsky Cinema Hall.4 1896, 1954 - Soviet documentary film and cinema theorist.5 1929 - Dziga Vertov - “The Man With a Movie Camera” Film - Introduction notes. Descriptive and conceptual manifesto presented in the first frames of the Projection.6 1997 - Grant Tracey - Video review on Kino.com, Kino on Video Series - An analysis on Vertov Manifesto based on the innovating and experimental context of the cinematographer.7 1898, 1956 – German poet and theatre director.8 1893, 1984 – Soviet writer, literary critic and scenographer. 9 From the russian word “ostranenie” .




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perceptiveness of the form and in the case of our concept design, the elaborate and elegant, historical and sustained, tool for the representation

of the Russian Society in the past, present and future.

The project reflects, in the form of the used module10 humanized scale, the opposition between the mirrored surroundings and the projected

(and thus controlled) frames of the new building façade. This dichotomy is the main emphasis of the theory behind the presented concept.

Projection and Reflection and all the connected purposes of the dual reality of the building.

This is achieved in two directions and with different goals.

In the NE-SW direction of the building towards de Pushkin Square, we can see our foregrounded reflection framed in the mirrored11 and

modulated parts of the façade. Then we can perceive the Square itself in the background. The Russians (and others) will see themselves

reflected in the building in the near base module parts of the new shell structure. These ones are geometrically directed to the center of the

adjacent sidewalk and oriented opposite to the entrance of the building.

In the opposite SW-NE direction of the building (and directly aligned with the foregrounded Square), we can absorb the entire and urban

backgrounded presence of the new and dynamic object that constantly changes in a film like frame rate per second motion. This is projected by

the climacteric changed and modulated shell canvas of the building that presents not only the new semi transparent architectural form of the

cinema hall, but also its main function by acting as a controlled water changed, distorted and refracted surface for projections of any kind.

10 The module acts as a individual projection canvas for each individual participating in the collective moment of awareness.11 The modules are 90% mirrored Butacite® structural interlayer with SentryGlas® opacity, printing and mirroring techniques.




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Materials

The use of Dupont® SentryGlas® Expressions and Butacite® interlayer is relevant on providing the building façade the ability to cope with the

design structural and plastic ambitions. These advanced materials are mixed together in order to achieve bigger urban and architectural design

goals such as:

– cope with the total weight of the module when filled with water within safety standards and international regulations;

– allow the molding and/or folding of the glass modules to perfect the industrial design of the individual piece;

– reflect the building's surroundings with a mirrored layer and/or interlayer;

– receive the distant cinematic projection with the controlled and desired definition for the available viewing distance, with a transparent

layer and/or interlayer with the needed graphic definition while maintaining the transparency level of the glass;

– with the Butacite® interlayer, provide the additional reinforcement to cope with the added weight of aprox. 800Kg of water (730L) in

each module of the façade;

– enhance the visual richness of the core (glass) with the added (water) material in all of the new elevations and contribute to the global

design desired composition.




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Goals

• The historical and cultural context completes the conceptual approach in the achievement of an urban, architectural icon

full of meanings and underlining the need to see the reflected present in the projected past towards an always innovating

future, like the 1929's Vertov future.

• The chosen materials are a direct result of the geographic and climatic context and a direct use of their cyclic change range.

• The design concept projects in the building lateral façades the images of the cinematic documents chosen to project to be

seen in the Pushkin Square.

• The design concept reflects the images of 2011+ humans that are near enough the façade in order to be reflected by it.

• The controlled opacity/transparency glass, water and interlayers allows the co existence of the original building with the

new structure.




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Projection our Reflection

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