Analogy: The representation of Space

Xin Zhang

When we drifting on the street, what is occupying the city? Where am I? Where was I? What can be eternal? What can be endless? Based on the brief topic: slice, I kept zooming in and dividing the city into these small pieces, then I found each fragment of the city has its own timeliness and historicity.

This kind of cutting can be regarded as excavation for surveying and recording archaeological remains which present the development and space-time of the city/area/ block/building. Through the cyclic process of erosion/exposure/coverage/ deposition of earth, city’s time and space can be “measured”.

“The city is a theater in which human events are staged.”( Aldo Rossi, 1981) The past, the present and the potential future are staged at the city. Some architectures are retained, some are demolished, some are covered by a new building. The relationship/periodicity of replacement is hidden in it. Here, I captured this circulation of “built-rebuilt”.

I utilized two methodologies to approach a new understanding of the original space. In other words, this project is to revert the representation of space(subject) to a spatial representation(object). The methodology of analog space that I used is to direct the way how human participation in the space. “One breaks-in another human living being by making them repeat a certain act, a certain gesture or movement” (Lefebvre, 2004).

The reflection produced by humans in a specific object in space will be used as a medium in my exploration. Through the methodology of analogy (people produce actions on object A, then object A and object B have the same characteristic (typology), so people will have the same behavioral reflection on B) to measure the origin/being of space. It simulates the part of “built”.

For the methodology of symbolization， it is a way to make objects abstract (revert the signified to the signifier). Symbolization is not to make the space formed by these elements have directivity, but a process of generalizing/ materializing space. As symbols are one of the objects that affect/construct human cognition. They will form their own understanding of these geometric symbols according to the environment/place they have experienced. It simulates the part of “rebuilt”.