EPISODICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SECTIONS

Rendering as a Design Tool

Selected project for the 2020 End of the Year Show exhibition at Columbia GSAPP at GSAPP

GSAPP Spring 2021: Section as Analytical and Design Tool

Instructor: Marc Tsurumaki

Tools and Fabrication: Rhinoceros, Enscape, Illustrator, Photoshop

Episodes from Sectional Photographs seek to understand the way sections operate as a representational device to reveal as well as conceal social-political issues of domestic labor in Casa Butantã (1964) by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, São Paulo. The modernist house is represented through three episodes that reveal the house’s horizontal organization — a central bedroom core between two habitable corridors — and the vertical organization — the family’s living space stacked on the “maid’s quarter.” The series of cross-sections emphasize the concrete structure that lifts the main volume above ground and cantilevers the balcony-corridors on both sides. While the building’s depth responds to the sun shading needs, the skylights provide light to the bedrooms. Furthermore, by representing the sections as hybrid — line and photography— it merges concepts of memory and nostalgia to spatiality, exposing inequalities in the domestic sphere.