To spark imagination: the American Film Institute

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the role and influence imagination plays on a building for the arts. The American Film Institute is considered to be a building for the production and study as well as the presentation of film. Because imagination is the most important tool the film maker possesses and is that which the general audience becomes a part of, this thesis strives to produce a building which enhances this tool. Steel and glass have been chosen as two of the three primary materials in the film institute for their reflective properties as well as their specific properties to distort reflections. Concrete was chosen as the third primary material not only for its compressive strength, but for its many possible finishes and its compatibility (being non-reflective) with the other two primary materials. The institute will be created in such a way that even in their permanence they will provide for a changing space which will make for a re-occurring newness each time it is visited, thus sparking the imagination. To the user of the institute, the space will each time be new. It takes on this characteristic as its users encounter their own reflection as well as the reflections - sometimes distorted - of others. This is enhanced as movement occurs not always in a straight line nor only at one level. Shade and shadow from stationary light, as further enhance the imagination. “The spatial area, whatever it may be—room, stage, garden, street—is the screen; the moving objects and people are the picture-in-solution reconstituted as a transient entity in time and space.”³

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1989

Author dc:creator

• Harmon, Rebecca J.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Holt, Jaan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Hunt, Gregory K.
• Small, Stephen W.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/53219

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/53219