This portal gives access to visualisations of architectural profiles that aim at gaining a synthetic, abstract view of their rhythm and composition, thereby facilitating the analysis of tendencies and discordances, and comparisons at large. The underlying model aggregates abstract features of a 3D moulded object, may the object be real (existing or having existed) or purely theoretical (from literature). The aim is to uncover patterns and exceptions in the design of mouldings (across historical periods, across territories, across stylistic affiliations, across families of 3D objects, and across sources) and ultimately gain insight on relations of mouldings to one another, and to the architectural theory. The visualisation is composed of two information groups, global profile analysis and components and lengths analysis, corresponding to a move from a general analysis to a close view of segments. All segments of a profile - whatever their real dimensions are – are mapped inside a predefined gauge, the height of which representing the profile’s longest segment. Graphically, a fixed-width rectangle represents each segment: its height corresponds to a ratio of the longest segment. What is perceived then are the relative importance of each segment inside the composition, not their actual size. Colours used for fixed-width rectangles help spotting alternations of concave (red), convex (yellow) and flat curves (brown).
Interface 1
View of the collections of cases (2D visualisation and XML formatted data)
Interface 2
View of the collections of cases (2D visualisation, 3D transpositions and XML formatted data)
Interface 3
Playing with segments: interaction in the 2D visualisation and in the XML formatted data
Interface 4
Playing with segments: interaction in the 2D and visualisations
Interface 5
Profile mapping: creation of new data sets in an interactive point picking environment