(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 26

A pirouette on the orthographic hinge

Lois Weinthal

Some were small hurrying lights, as if servants dashed along corridors to answer summonses; others were high and lustrous lights … and others dipped and waved and sank and rose, as if held in the hands of troops of serving men, bending, kneeling, rising, receiving, guarding, and escorting with all dignity indoors.$^1$

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando

In Virginia Woolf’s novel, light was the medium that made the movement of domestic helpers visible by the main character, Orlando, and revealed their actions in his palatial residence as he looked on, from a distance, from one interior into another. A subtle yet significant detail of this text was the decision to set the story in the Elizabethan era and reveal the intimate tracking of the body through a single point of light illuminated by an oil lantern or candle. By choosing this setting, Woolf accomplished two significant spatial maneuvers in her text: the first being the characters’ movements mapped by their direct connection to light, and second,

Orlando’s view from a distance resulting in a degree of objectivity, setting apart the observer from the observed.

The practice of interior design anticipates the movement of occupants where time as a variable reveals temporary events that take place. Time-based events distinguish interiors from the static form of architecture, yet the documentation of both these spatial realms defer to orthographic drawings as the unifying form of representation. Orthographic drawings work well to record forms that foresee no change until a renovation prompts a new set of orthographic drawings. With Woolf’s excerpt in mind, Orlando’s palatial residence could be documented in orthographic projection, but the system is not conducive to the temporal movements of the occupants since they are not static like architecture. It is possible to imagine that in the time it takes to draw a room, occupants could be moving in and out without a trace of their presence in the room, and orthographic drawings like it that way; it keeps the space clean and objective rather than muddy with the ephemeral shoes of people walking through it.

This introduction sets forth the overarching intention of this chapter, which is to probe the orthographic projection drawing system to find where it loses its grip on supporting the work of the designer. This fissure takes place where the temporal activities on the interior are left off the orthographic drawing. The conceptual hinge that binds the framework of plan and section follows a set of logical rules that provide true data under the assumption that only physical elements are documented. This system is conducive to the static nature of architecture. In contrast, interiors align with time-based activities but are typically absent in orthographic drawings. However, they are still part of the architecture when occupation of the interior begins at full scale.

This chapter makes reference to various scenarios used to reveal the dynamic life of interiors that exist simultaneously with the static architectural realm. The orthographic hinge will be compromised in order to test how dynamic elements can be made visible. What is seen in plan may not always be present or align with what is seen in section, and vice versa. In order to insert these temporal elements into the orthographic system, it is

necessary to understand what grounds them to the physical world, in order to fall under the context of true data, and form a realignment back to the principles of orthographic projection. At the same time, the temporal elements draw into question ways in which the orthographic system has the potential to evolve. In order to develop a relationship between the temporal and static in orthographic projection, an explanation of the orthographic system with emphasis on specific variables will be highlighted that segue into subsequent sections of this chapter. These variables will be placed in the context of movement by dancers, and to some extent, actors, all of whom are based on a stage where plan and section are mimicked through the blank slate of stage floor and backdrop. Movement by dancers and actors reveal where temporal occupation aligns and misaligns with orthographic projection.

A set of elements identified in Orlando’s residence, being the points of light, domestic chores, and the observer, will appear again as variables in examples that follow. In the first section, a dancer’s pirouette will help visualize how movement can be documented differently in plan and section. The concluding example will return to a conventional interior setting arranged by industrial engineers who sought to document the moving body in order to design for ergonomically improved domestic interiors. In these examples, the fleeting can always be grounded in true data, and the means by which the fleeting is documented can be captivating due to the invisible forces that are being made visible.

Orthographic projection

Orthographic projection is the fundamental drawing system in interior architectural design for grounding a project in true measurement in order to convey information to builders. The system provides a universal form of visual communication by utilizing a set of variables that have reached a level of objectivity. The evolution of this drawing type relies upon a clear set of rules whereby a field of parallel lines meets a perpendicular surface. Plan, section, and elevation inform one another across invisible hinges that result

in a collection of two-dimensional views folded up to convey a three-dimensional form.

The perpendicular relationship is neutral until the draughtsperson activates the latent field of invisible parallel lines received by the passive surface patiently awaiting the drawn line, also known as the picture plane. The receiving surface is meant to be flat in order to record the lines with precision, otherwise a ripple in the picture plane would disrupt the rules and potentially cause misinterpretation. The parallel lines can be seen as a collection of points that appear on the paper and assist the draughtsperson in realizing a design, but at a scale that is manageable at the size of a desk. Point, line, and plane help translate back and forth between one, two, and three dimensions, where the point can be seen as the fundamental element upon which everything else is built. What appears as a point or line in one drawing (such as a plan), may appear as a plane in another drawing (elevation), hence the need for multiple views in order to piece together an understanding of the whole. As the design appears on paper, the drawing requires that the form being recorded hold still, as if being drawn for a still life. This works for static elements but is unaccepting of the temporary and fleeting. This matters not so much for architecture, but it matters in interior design, where the practice is responsible for designing the temporary and fleeting. Time is a variable inherent to the temporal, but absent from this drawing type. With these variables and rules in place, how can the designer integrate the temporal? The next section of this chapter will use dance as a means of highlighting temporal movements of occupants to probe where the orthographic system supports or breaks from allowing the temporal to enter into the drawing.

Dancing across the hinge

The movement of a dancer is a myopic representation of how the body moves through space. It is choreographed and predictable, unlike the casual occupant who walks through a room and can make an unpredictable decision about their trajectory based upon environmental cues as simple as

the placement of furniture, light, and other occupants. There is a distinction between the empty stage activated by a dancer and a room programmed to fulfill the needs of an occupant. Both can be documented using orthographic projection, with the former resulting in a simple view and the latter with more complexity. The surfaces and interruptions on it, whether they be furniture or objects, are easy to document because of their static nature, but orthographic projection does not like movement. The system relies upon static surfaces for precise documentation where relationships of proximity are gauged against one another. This helps the hinge between plan and elevation find inherent alignment so that one does not have to go chasing the other, but the movement of people is dynamic and does not fit easily into this system. Rather than trying to pinpoint the occupant to one location captured at a precise orthographic moment, this chapter seeks to follow the dancer in space in order to provoke the orthographic drawing and its hinge.

An entry point into the movement of dancers is the pirouette. It is dynamic and static at the same time. The body is twirling in motion around a single point: the pointe shoe of the dancer. In the plan view where pointe shoe meets floor, the location of the body can be located as a dot. What the drawing does not reveal is the turning of the pointe shoe and inherent movement of a pirouette. In this case, the movement takes place in plan drawing but there is no distinction as to whether it is static or dynamic. As the view moves up from plan to elevation, the asymmetry of the pirouette pose can no longer be documented in the language of point, line, or plane. The tip of the pointe shoe does not extend upward to a line; the body becomes a blur, which the orthographic system does not like. The pirouette is a unique example when placed in dialogue with the orthographic system. It allows for the body to be captured at about an inch above plan, but loses connection beyond that (Figure 26.1).

To capture a dancer in motion, time is necessary to record change. This can be accomplished through photography, as seen in the works of Jules Etienne Marey or Eadweard Muybridge, where change is registered over a sequence of still frames. At the height of her career, Anna Pavlova, the Russian ballerina, was known for her performance of Swan Lake during the

turn of the twentieth century. Her role as the dying swan, which she immortalized, brought her to the foreground of ballet as the preeminent ballerina of her time. She would continue to perform as the lead in Swan Lake across international theatres until her career ended unexpectedly. On the eve before one of her performances scheduled in The Hague in 1931, a rapid decline in her health was brought on by an inflammation of the lung and resulted in her death.$^2$ It was not anticipated that this would be her last performance, and as an anecdote goes, the performance went on but rather than being danced by Pavlova, she was represented by a point of light moving across the stage to mark her movements. The point of light was a projection that registered on the floor, similar to an orthographic plan view marking one-dimensional points, and similar to the pirouette discussed earlier. There are a number of variables at play in this scenario. Plan view, perpendicular projections, and markings are variables that fall under the orthographic system. Since this system is not conducive to the recording of a person, perhaps light as a replacement for the body can be considered an intermediate step toward an alternative iteration of the drawing. After all, the same rules and variables apply.

Figure 26.1 Dancer’s pirouette Image credit: source unknown

Space-shapes The introductory epigraph from Orlando described movements of the body when undertaking domestic chores. Woolf placed emphasis on movements such as “bending, kneeling, rising, receiving, guarding, and escorting,” rather than the specific tasks associated with them. We know that kneeling in the

context of domestic chores could apply to the task of putting items away, cleaning the floor, and so on. At a formal level, designers would categorize these tasks with familiar programmatic terms, and the alternative would be to situate the actions in the context of anthropometric studies. The difference between these two may appear subtle as one folds into the other, but the distinction between them is what separates programming spaces through diagrams versus empirically documenting the body in action.

Jane Callaghan and Catherine Palmer were industrial engineers conducting research in the 1940s with emphasis on improving the design of the domestic realm by documenting the moving body undertaking domestic chores. They sought to capture the moving body and frame it within categories of tasks, but their intention was first to see how the body moved in time and space before making assumptions about the programmed interior. Thus, they knew to separate programming from anthropometric studies. In order to study these movements, they developed methods of documentation using 35mm camera photographs followed by a translation of these images into three-dimensional models.

Their studies documented people undertaking singular activities such as washing hair, getting dressed, and putting on stockings. The results were summarized and published in their 1944 book, Measuring Space and Motion, where they describe their intention of these experiments as “the development of techniques by which space used by the human body in action can be recorded, measured, and reproduced in tangible three-dimensional form useful as the basis of house design.” Callaghan and Palmer developed a system for documenting their models in a “stage” setting that mimicked the drawing relationship of orthographic projection. With a stage, multiple 35mm cameras, and mirrors in key locations, they documented their actors in “three or more simultaneous views of these definitive motions, a method of correcting for perspective, and a method of presenting a final space-shape to scale.” In order to produce documentation and understand the subject matter “in-the-round,” they relied upon multiple views, each taking on a drawing view typical of orthographic projection that included plan and elevations. The images were synthesized to form a three-

dimensional model, but what emerged in the process was the challenge of finding a common line that each image could align to for precision. In the example of washing hair, “It also happened that the front views were photographed at a greater distance from the camera than the side views. This necessitated enlargement of the front view before the two composites could be joined together to make the model.” The scalar difference in the photographs needed correction for their images to align, but a second challenge was the need for the multiple views being photographed to be taken simultaneously to help with the alignment in the three-dimensional model. This would ensure that if an arm were raised in the air in one view, that another view would capture it at the same time and location. The need for multiple views and a reference line upon which to gauge all data falls within the rules of orthographic projection. While they faced technical challenges that may seem minor with our current technology, theoretically they were early pioneers chipping away at the challenge of locating the moving body in orthographic projection. Inherent to the orthographic system is the ability to take individual views of an object and fold them up into a three-dimensional form in its most basic silhouette. If done correctly, shared information across all views will align. The photographs taken by Callaghan and Palmer were used in a similar manner. In their documentation of hair washing, the photographs were aligned around a core vertical axis, upon which multiple elevation photographs were centered. In this case, the central axis provided the hinge for connection.

Figure 26.2 Three-dimensional planar model by Callaghan and Palmer using photographs taken from multiple views showing the body moving for washing hair. In Jane Callaghan and Catherine Palmer, Measuring Space and Motion (New York: John B. Pierce Foundation, 1944), page 15.

In other three-dimensional examples, they chose to look at the larger breadth of space taken up by the person performing a task, and rather than limiting themselves to $x$, $y$, and $z$ planes for the model, they interpolated the body’s movement from one view to another to fill in the diagonals. They called these outcomes “space-shape.” The results would take the form of clay models, cardboard collages, wire figure armatures, papier mâché, and straws to name a few. The three-dimensional models captured

the collective set of movements from one action. At times, it appeared that the greater challenge was how to coalesce the views and represent the body in motion as a static model when the movement of the body is inherently fluid.

Light tracings This chapter began with a description of Orlando watching his servants perform their duties based upon a light they held that made their actions visible from a distance. Similarly, the audience that was scheduled to see Anna Pavlova’s last performance instead saw a beam of light dance across the stage to visualize where she would be. Light, as a form of marking a person’s movements also factored into Callaghan and Palmer’s work. One form of documentation they developed was called a “dark technique” photograph, whereby the actor wore “lights attached to head, hands, elbows, feet, and back… . The shutter of the camera was left open throughout the action and the moving lights recorded the paths of motion."6 The photographic result was a time-lapse capturing movement made by the tracings of a point of light. In works like this where true data was extracted, while simultaneously fulfilling a phenomenal graphic, they gave an alternative form of representation of the moving body for designers to consider. Through their multiple experiments of documentation and representation, the collection of Callaghan and Palmer’s work could be seen as the precursors to current motion capture technology.

Callaghan and Palmer worked within the principles of orthographic projection, and in some cases found ways of producing data of the moving body that the system accepts. As for the pirouette, it challenges the orthographic system to fracture at approximately one inch above the plan view. It is a point of registration, yet diverges as a discrete entity to become broader and more spatial, with the full view of the dancer as the view moves up in elevation from the single point. The fracture initiates an opportunity for another type of drawing to enter into the Cartesian relationship and form a new hinge. It may seem plausible for the rules of

construction documents to integrate this request, but a moment of disbelief is already inherent in the orthographic drawing – such as the rule that allows the dotted line to represent what is behind or in front of the picture plane, while still allowing the variables to remain constant.

If the rules were altered, what would happen? Is it possible that the outcome, if still following a set of rules, would result in another reading, much like the anamorphic drawing technique developed out of the conventions of perspective did during the baroque? There is still precision in the anamorphic technique. The degree of objectivity that the variables and principles of orthographic projection have arrived at result in a set of rules distilled to fundamentals that are unarguable. The missing piece is the integration of movement that has yet to find a way into the drawing that can become part of the professional construction document set. In the examples given throughout this chapter, movement also has the potential to be distilled down to a set of rules, but it may have to be derived from the documentation of movement first, which can only help designers become better aware of how the body moves in space.

The protagonist to this chapter, Orlando, helped usher in the question about how to represent the moving body in the orthographic language in order to have meaning to the construction document as it moves down (or up) the chain of construction. At the same time, Orlando goes on to challenge another kind of hinge, one that bridges male to female and

opens up discussions in multiple disciplines. In another scene from Orlando, observer and observed now change roles as it is the servants that watch Orlando as “a light passing along the galleries, through the banqueting-halls, up the staircases, into the bedrooms, and knew that their master was perambulating the house alone.”

Notes

1. Virginia Woolf, Orlando (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1928), p. 20.
2. Oleg Kerensky, Anna Pavlova (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973), p. 149.
3. Jane Callaghan and Catherine Palmer, Measuring Space and Motion (New York: John B. Pierce Foundation, 1944), p. 13.
4. Ibid., p. 5.
5. Ibid., p. 15.
6. Ibid., p. 14.
7. For an overview of the development of the anamorphic drawing technique, see Alberto Perez-Gomez and Louise Pelletier book, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997).
8. Woolf, Orlando, p. 68.