Allegory of The Lift

One Over Many!

2018
Master of Architecture and Urban Design / Design To Fabrication
Politecnico di Milano
Tutor: Marco Hammerling
Design/Installation Team: Shima Ravaei, Milad Abbasi, Houman Riazi

The temptation to find the truth has always been an overwhelming concern which has shaped a variety of theories regarding conceptions such as reality, imagination, illusion, perception and lately, virtual reality. Among all, the Allegory of The Cave, presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic, arose fundamental questions about the notion of reality; In fact, by narrating a metaphorical story, he symbolized cavemen/prisoners (as humans), cave (as the universe), objects behind the wall (as the reality), shadow of the objects (as prisoners’ reality) and caveman who is freed from the cave (as the educated man) and compared “the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature”.

Architecture, on the other hand, binds with the same conceptions as there is almost always a constant shift from imagination to reality and vice versa. In other words, a part of the disciplinary of architecture always deals with the question of how to design a reality (or realities) based on imagination(s) while another part may question the possibility of using the available reality to make imaginary worlds such as the process of sci-fi movie-making and so on. During one of those transitional periods after industrial revolution though, technology came into play and virtual reality was born; a tool which apart from its role in the industry, has provided new possibilities for architectural design and imagination and opened its way through new architectural practices.

Parallel to the technological progress of architecture, virtual reality was examined in different disciplinaries as well. In 1999, for instance, Cristina Botella and her colleagues worked on an interesting psychological topic to treat claustrophobia with virtual reality. Surprisingly perhaps, the process of simulating small spaces and letting those who suffer from claustrophobia to experience them by means of virtual reality before facing the actual situation helped to decrease the anxiety and positively affect the process of treatment in certain case-studies.

The intersection of architecture, virtual reality and psychology are where the framework of this architectural project shaped in which the perception of the space and playing with the conception of reality set as main goals. Accordingly, the elevator, as an architectural element, was chosen as the desirable space since has both the manageable dimension to control the project and relates with the idea of small spaces and the phenomenon of claustrophobia; In fact, the reason for using mirrors in interior space of most elevators is regarding to reduce the anxiety and increase the safety as it will provide a wide range of vision to see what is happening around you in a small space.

Considering the function of the mirror as an interior element, the next step in the project defined as to extend the small space of an elevator by means of virtual reality. Consequently, anamorphic techniques were found to be the best tool to provide this illusional extension inside the elevator.