g e n e r a l a r t i c l e Inside Out Video Mapping and the Architectural Facade E ra n n E u m A n This article discusses the conceptual implications of the introduction namely, their role as a mediator between architectural inte- of video mapping to building facades, the role of the facade as rior and exterior spaces. an architectural mediator between interior and exterior spaces and One of the primary roles of the architectural surface is to the ways in which video mapping transforms this role. At one time ABSTRACT transparent (in modern architecture) and then opaque (in postmodern envelop spaces inwardly and thereby dissociate them from architecture), the architectural facade has traditionally maintained its external spaces. As the building’s front, the facade forms part integrity as a mediator between public and private spheres. Video of this surface. As such, the facade in its various manifesta- mapping proposes to transform this situation by creating an ever- tions mediates between a building’s interiority and its exte- changing image for the facade, as well as by exploiting the facade’s rior space. Buildings never end with interior spaces; both the ability to absorb any projection on its surface. The outcome is a video- spaces that immediately surround them and those that are mapped facade, composed of both a physical surface and the video’s farther away are parts of the building. The facade mediates virtual images; together, these two elements create a new type of architectural facade. between these spaces, interrelating the two in various ways. The interior spaces are sometimes secluded from the outside ones, creating an intimate and protective realm. On other In recent years, the architectural and artistic worlds have occasions, interior and exterior spaces might be more con- witnessed a quickening succession of video mapping instal- nected, flowing into one another almost seamlessly. lations that were projected on various occasions in locations In my research, I examine the relation between video map- around the world. Based on virtual images, these installations pings and the surface on which they are screened—in par- present an array of visual sequences—figurative and abstract, ticular, the architectural facades. While primarily referring to realistic and phantasmagorical, commercial and purely ar- a video mapping installation generated by Ran Tsahor [1] for tistic. While differing from one another in content, all these the opening gala of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s Herta and installations share a defining common element: Each one was Paul Amir Building, I would like to address the ways in which site specific. That is because video mapping installations do Tsahor’s installation and a group of other such installations not relate to the surface—or more particularly, the facade— attempt to transform the facade’s role as a mediator between on which they are projected as a flat blank screen. Rather, video mappings usually stem from the physical condition of the facade surface, relating to it either by enhancing its innate properties or by negating them. Through their direct reference to the architectural facade, most video mapping installations challenge the facade’s in- tegrity. Some try to subvert the image of the building pro- duced by the facade by fully concealing it and projecting new imagery onto the building’s front. Others use the facade as a point of departure to extend the complexity it presents. In this article, I discuss one specific way in which video mapping installations challenge the integrity of the facade, Eran Neuman (educator), Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Email: <[email protected]>. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/51/3> for supplemental files Fig. 1. Tsahor’s video mapping projection on Tel Aviv Museum of Art facade. associated with this issue. (Courtesy of Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Photography: Sivan Faraj.) 258 LEONARDO, Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 258–264, 2018 doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01381 ©2018 ISAST Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01381 by guest on 27 September 2021 interior and exterior spaces (Figs 1,2). Tsahor, for instance, the facades of Romanesque architecture and their attempt to used several techniques to challenge the building’s facade, create mute surfaces that blocked off the possibility of seeing including projecting onto it images of actions taking place inside and observing the building’s interiority. Nor did they inside the building or “playing” with the facade’s materiality. offer any clues about the interior by way of their formal shape Below I analyze Tsahor’s video mapping installation as a or their materiality. case study that exemplifies the role of such installations in the Years later, postmodern facades also tried to conceal the transformation of the facade. Preceding this analysis, I refer building’s interiority through the use of opaque cladding to architectural history and discuss aspects of the role of the materials. In this case, the reflection of the human subjects’ facade. I also address the history of video mapping to provide own images on the mirror-clad building envelopes both pre- a basis for a fuller understanding of the principle and practice vented them from seeing inside and made them see themselves of integrating facade and video projection. These discussions on the building’s surface. Sometimes, users of mirror-clad are intended to shed light on the new conditions that video buildings could see from the inside out. But generally, mapping installations create for the architectural facade as a the building’s interiority and exteriority were dissociated mediator between interior and exterior spaces. from one another, creating separate spatial conditions, each with its own separate function. ThE Architectural FacadE And In other cases, the facade revealed to varying degrees the Interior And Exterior Spaces: building’s interiorities. Modern architecture’s fascination Mediation, Barrier And IdEntity with glass and transparency represents one aspect of this The role of the facade as a mediator between a building’s tendency. The ostensible material effacement of the glass fa- interiority and its external spaces has been considered in ar- cade resulted in the flow of interior space outward and vice chitectural practice and theory since antiquity. As early as versa. Glass was present as a material performing some of the first century B.C.E., the Roman architect and civil en- the facade’s other functions, for instance, the regulation of gineer Vitruvius addressed in his Ten Books on Architecture climate and protection from the elements. As a visual regula- the issue of the facade and expressed one way to perceive its tor between inside and outside, however, it was absent. role [2]. For Vitruvius, the facade was a site with a symbolic The facade’s transparency was more than merely a matter function; he claimed that it should be directed outward and of materiality, in this case, glass. As Colin Rowe and Robert presented the desired architectural order (Doric, Corinthian Slutzky argued in their seminal essay “Transparency: Literal or Ionic). Some 17 centuries after Vitruvius, the Venetian ar- and Phenomenal,” facades could be phenomenally transpar- chitect Andrea Palladio expanded on the role of the facade ent only if they maintain some spatial depth beyond their and expressed yet another way to perceive it—as a signifier of apparent surface [4]. The thickness and layers of the facade a building’s interiority. In the 14th chapter of his Four Books convey a feeling of transparency as if one could look right on Architecture, while discussing the ways in which architects through it. should design and plan villas, he noted that the pediment Rowe and Slutzky mainly addressed the facade’s role in of the facade should indicate the entrance to the villa [3]. relation to the concept of transparency, but they also exam- Similarly, the other elements that created the facade were ined its role in relation to the systems that occupy it. As time meant to signify various aspects of the building’s interiority. passed, facades started incorporating a greater number of Indeed, the facade’s role as a mediator between interior systems, including programmatic systems, such as windows and exterior spaces has fluctuated over the years. Occasion- and balconies; sanitary systems, such as sewage; electronic ally, the facade concealed the building’s interiority so com- and communication systems, such as satellite dishes or cellu- pletely that it was impossible to guess, or even to receive any lar antennas; and climatologic systems, such as photovoltaic information about, what was going on inside. This recalls panels [5]. Thus, facades started to disclose to an even greater extent the activities taking place inside buildings. This increasing incorporation of various systems into the facade’s surface changed its role as a barrier. Whereas previ- ously, the facade often had functioned as a protective shell that would not let the outside penetrate inside (or was at least unidirectional), it now became porous and allowed systems and information flow interchangeably to the point at which the interior spaces change their nature. Reyner Banham and artist François Dallegret expanded on this phenomenon in their essay “A Home is not a House,” claiming that the inva- sion into the house of technologies and systems through the facade even annulled its function as a home [6]. In many ways, the advent of the interchangeable facade dismantled the binary condition of inside and outside. These were no longer compartmentalized; rather, their amalgama- tion created a “trans” condition of bidirectional flow. For Fig. 2. Tel Aviv Museum of Art facades. (© Eran Neuman) Diane Agrest, this condition reflected an attempt to refute Neuman, Inside Out 259 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01381 by guest on 27 September 2021 the logocentric and anthropocentric conditions created by Latin root.