Summary: |
This research intends to test the architectural application of Jean Piaget’s clinical observations, described in the book: The Child’s Conception of Space (Piaget, 1956), according to which topology is an ordering discipline, active in the human psyche. Earlier attempts, based on the principles of graph-theory, were able to cover only a narrow aspect of spatial relations, i.e. connectivity, and were mostly a-perceptional, visually mute. The “Spaceprint” method, explained and illustrated in co-author’s book: Thought Palaces (Magyar, 1999), through dimensional reduction, investigates volumetric, 3D characteristics and relationships with planar 2D configurations. These configurations, however, represent dual values: they are simultaneously the formal descriptors of both finite matter and (fragments of) infinite space. The so- called “Particular Spaceprint”, as a tool of design development in building, object, or urban scales, with the help of digital technology, could express - again simultaneously - qualities of an idea-gram and the visual, even tactile aspects of material reality. With topological surface-transformations, the “General Spaceprints”, these abstract yet visually active spatial formulas can be obtained. |