A NEW PERSPECTIVE

I've been running in Phoenix Park recently training for a sponsored 20K, and came across this mysterious looking fortified building which I had never seen before. Its a abandoned military barracks complex called Magazine Fort, built in 1735 by the British army and subsequently used by the 'Free State Army' as a munitions Store.

Through the Abandoned Ireland website I also found these fantastic images of the interior spaces in the fort and I thought wow it looks amazing!! Vaulted arches spanning complex multi-faceted floor plans! But as it turned out the photographer had used a 360 Deg virtual reality camera to take navigable interactive images of the (only slightly) less impressive spaces.  

This however got me thinking about modes of representation and how this relatively new technology

has essentially enabled the presentation of entirely unique and (super real?) views of our environment which our front facing visual system limited to views of between 40-60 deg at a time otherwise precludes. 

Think how very different our whole conception of our physical and material environments would be if this was our natural mode of vision? The extra dimensions of complexity and relationality it would allow us to observe and appreciate. As a designer the possibilities and opportunities which would be both enabled and required in planning fully 3 dimensional spaces would be revelatory!

Irregardless of all the above they are also just really beautiful in their decrepitude.