Architectural Capriccios

This coursework thematised the traditional pictorial genre of the architectural capriccio, but did so by incorporating newer digital visual processes and using material-independent resource elements (3D components) that can be isolated, distorted, textured and recombined at will. After an introduction to the 3D graphics program Cinema 4D, the students were asked to put together a collection of various editable 3D models, which were to be taken from freely accessible digital 3D libraries – for example: 3D models of different everyday objects, technical equipment and individual architectural elements. Next, a selection of individual 3D components were to be rearranged and combined to form freely invented and architectural visual figures (architectural capriccios). In the first phase, these were to be formed as monolithic, architectural and textured bodies (monoliths). Finally, freer and more assembled structures (composites) were to be created. In addition to teaching 3D graphics through the use of the program Cinema 4D as an example, the aim was to encourage experimental composition techniques, based on free arrangement of newly available digital resource components.