Siqi Huang

Maritime Echoes

Interior, Architectural and Spatial Design - MA

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

The Phenomenology of ships: 2D to 3D transformation

Project description

For centuries, ships have played a vital role in humanity's relationship with the sea, serving not only as essential modes of transportation but also as enduring symbols of our navigational culture. As I observed the ship, I recognized it as a unique form of architecture. Both ships and buildings contribute to different ecologies within space, evolving alongside history and changing functions. They also share the capacity to provide people with similar feelings of shelter, safety, order, and acceptance, leading to the emergence of distinctive cultural phenomena.

In light of this, I plan to explore maritime culture and the historical space of Leith Custom House through the lens of the phenomenological approach described in "The Poetics of Space." My aim is to uncover the influence that the ship, as a symbol of Leith’s culture, and the historic structure of the Custom House exert on the human experience. By using the Custom House as a medium, I hope to forge connections between the past, present, and future.

Methodological Construction And Spatial Reorganization Rules

Stage 1: To interpret the spatial structure of the various parts of the ship and analyze how the ship gives people different moods and emotions in terms of height, vision, color and atmosphere. Once I get a spatial keyword, I try to capture that feeling, using a phenomenological language to translate it into a spatial language. Meanwhile, add as much space atmosphere sketches as I can based on other scenes on the ship.

Stage 2: After obtaining as many sketches of the space atmosphere as possible, pair and reconstruct the phenomenon drawing according to the story fluctuation degree described in Leith Mural. For example, Leith Mural draws a picture of Leith Hospital Celebration in the 20th century, which is the predecessor of today's Leith festival. Some celebration activities and traditions have been continued to the present. It has the appearance of connection and extension, which can be matched with certain phenomena in the ship. It is integrated into a concrete spatial composition for expression. The phenomenological language of ships, like X, is brought into the calculus of specific cultural formulas. Therefore, these reconstructed pictures will become the basis of the design.

Stage 3: Represent the reconstructed space into a three-dimensional space, connect them in series with historical narrative logic, and carry out spatial expression in the Custom House.

Methodological Construction And Spatial Reorganization Rules

Spatial Phenomenon Transformation

After getting the translation picture of the spatial phenomena of the ship, I tried to recombine them into a more specific and diversified spatial structure, so as to more truly express and match the story scenes recorded in Leith Mural, because no scene exists as a separate phenomenon apart from the whole, and behind each event is formed by different combinations of phenomena.

Before the reorganization, I carried out overlapping tests on the phenomenon drawings, hoping to find out more possibilities of phenomenon combination and fusion of spatial structure through this step.

After the overlap test, I got a lot of inspiration to combine several spatial phenomena. In this step, I turn my attention to the work of merging multiple spatial phenomena of the ship. By pairing and combining the characteristics of pair-to-pair spatial phenomena, I get a more concrete spatial structure. These pictures and structures will be translated as spatial language in the cultural formula of Leith Mural and applied in the spatial cohesion of the Custom House.