Scalelessness

photographic observations

funded travel research | Beijing, China | 2013
 

"Completely scaleless objects are otherworldly and lack any human scale in a way that is distancing and evades engagement. The oscillation between scales is about creating the possibility of engagement between the viewer and the object by being both familiar and strange - approaching the uncanny."  another pamphlet #04

Scale variations are perhaps nowhere as extreme as they are in Beijing, a city where monumental urban axes and building icons are interlaced with hutongs and micro-courtyards. However, the three buildings presented here are particularly striking - despite their monumental size, the buildings appear scaleless. The smooth monolithic paneling in the Performing Arts Center by Paul Andreu, the elaborate structural lattice in the National Olympic Stadium by HdM, Ai Weiwei, Arup, and the hyper-scaling of structure to the point of super-graphic in CCTV Headquarters by OMA contribute to the buildings' uncanny ability to confuse the viewer's perception of scale. 

The work was part of a larger travel research supported by Gertraud A. Wood Fellowship and William Wirt Winchester Traveling Fellowship from the Yale and was on display at the Yale School of Architecture in May 2013.