A central concept for the practice of architecture is the habit of looking, in order to do that we have our eyes (which process 80% of the sensory information of a sighted person), and in order to record it we have cameras. Despite that, these technologies show us mainly the same reality and just help us to save it somewhere else but our memory. With the arch-scope, we can also capture what is invisible and register it. Being able to look at things and movements we neglect, sometimes not even knowing that we are neglecting them.
By directing our attention towards unobserved details, we may begin to see relationships, dependencies and opportunities for better design and co-inhabitation of spaces that we have previously missed.
The traditional way of using the arch-scope would be similar to the way we use a kaleidoscope; looking through the peephole to see the other open side, the reality. The resulting images show us a distortion of reality and the relationship between body and space. In this case, the viewer is a member of the system. Nevertheless, this is an arch-scope and can be used differently. The arch-scope allows us to flip from inside to the outside and look at things from another angle. When the viewer uses the arch-scope from the other side, other interesting images reveal to his eyes. In this case, the viewer is an outsider of the system. We can start to look at the same things from another perspective, the peephole becomes a window that looks at the reality and we start to envision new experiences. The interior becomes the exterior, and the exterior becomes the interior.
A person never inhabits any other scale and any other space than the ones that are familiar, the person is always outside the other scale’s systems. With this simple gesture of switching the perspective, as humans we can start to inhabit other scales that are unfamiliar to us. Spaces that a human is not able to inhabit until the arch-scope comes into play. We can be insiders from spaces we were always outsiders, and outsiders from the spaces that we have always been insiders. But also, we can look at the spaces that we are insiders as insiders and start to realize other things that we are neglecting in our surroundings. The change of perspective within the same instrument, experimenting through a change of inhabitation, of experiences from the same reality, invites us to ask ourselves new questions and to make new resolutions. These experiences help us to better understand what surrounds us. In other words, we become more environmentally aware, and thus, embedded in our surroundings.
