The 145-year long construction of Antonio Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia has witnessed a ‘generation of technologies’ from hammers & chisels in the pre-digital era to softwares like Catia & 3D printing today. The Dis-Placed Roof examines how the legacies of iconic architecture from the pre-digital era begin to influence its surrounding urban fabric through the process of mistranslation in the post digital era. This case is evaluated through Antonio Gaudi’s highly individualized style, & more specifically from the church of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. Our roof is an inverted version of the ceiling in Sagrada Familia.
The production of this roof is guided by machine learning & algorithms where VQGAN+Clips is being used to generate images. Text prompts define the characteristics that help in further mis-translating OR re-defining the identity of our Dis-Placed Roof. A picture of the ceiling from Sagrada is used as an initial image on VQGAN which is trained using keywords & target image. These keywords characterize our roof & at the same time mis-translate its identity. Several machine generated outputs are then put together to reconstruct a new mistranslated visual of the ceiling at Sagrada. This mis-translated visual is further given a third dimension using several deformers in Cinema 4D which allows us to redefine its identity. The kaleidoscopic ceiling of Sagrada from the pre-digital age is dispersed on to its immediate context in the post-digital era. This abnormal roof functions as a single entity which is constantly in flux due to its kaleidoscopic nature both in 2 & 3 dimensions. It imitates the basic structure of a city by integrating a system of solid mass, water channels, skylights & solar panels. The undulations within the surface emphasize its dynamism & flexibility establishing a relation between the fragile nature of a 2-dimensional ceiling & a 3-dimensional roof.
The Dis-Placed Roof is our interpretation of Gaudi's creation in the post digital era.