When Kenneth Cameron and Charles Hellwig started their multidisciplinary design studio, Fourwall, they were very much at the same place in their creative careers. With degrees in architecture and film and work experience in both areas of expertise, they found themselves feeling like “frustrated filmmakers and frustrated architects,” as Charles Hellwig puts it. The name originates in the world of theater: the “fourth wall” refers to the barrier between the performance on stage and the audience that the actor may or may not cross. Loosely drawing from this meaning, Cameron and Hellwig are invested in creating a convergence of digital and physical environments and, in doing so, bringing architecture to film, media and design.
Architecture has come a long way from the days when we played “house.” By means of software such as Rhino and Maya, scripts are created that serve as the bases for complex patterns and structures, featuring intricate, organic aesthetics. When applying what is also called “scripting” to the world of visual effects, as Fourwall is doing right now in a commercial advertisement, the created digital environment boasts a highly textured structure owing to the knowledge about surfaces that an architect can bring to the table.
“Scripting”, in the way it is used here, is not necessarily about creating a specific space or environment, rather it is a highly complex generative process that results in something otherwise unimaginable, translating naturally occurring geometries, human behavior patterns and any other deliberate specifications into algorithms that are used as formulae to design amazing, unpredictable objects.
Hellwig points out that with endless possibilities the main focus is not necessarily to create a final product. Rather it is the process itself that makes this way of designing so fascinating. It is quite astonishing how the system creates something from itself – merely based on the right set of formulae – that looks so beautifully organic.
Link:
www.fourwall.com
