The View Funnel.
One repeated block, two different faces, and a view that changes as you move.
The View Funnel makes a wall into an instrument for looking: its openings reveal different views from different positions.
Designed with Ariana Yang in the Vibrant Blocks course, the project develops an asymmetric aperture within a repeatable block. The unit mediates between two distinct surfaces—a sharply modeled face and a flatter, more continuous reverse. Aggregated at the scale of a room, the blocks become a porous boundary that changes with the viewer and the light.
- Context
- Pratt Institute · Vibrant Blocks
- Semester
- Fall 2022
- Collaborators
- Siyue You & Ariana Yang
- Focus
- Unit geometry, aggregation & light
- Status
- Block design & spatial proposal
Two faces of the same opening.
The aperture does more than puncture the block. Its asymmetry gives the two sides different relief and different lines of sight. On one face, projecting edges and sharply defined curves give the unit a sculptural depth. On the reverse, adjacent units approach a continuous wall-like plane.
As a person walks alongside the screen, the openings align and separate. The space beyond is alternately revealed, compressed and framed. The design therefore treats movement as part of the pattern: the wall’s appearance is produced by both its geometry and the changing position of the observer.
The front and reverse have different relief, changing both the surface and the line of sight.
A unit becomes a spatial field.
Rotating the block across a repeated field produces variations in orientation without abandoning the underlying family of forms. Isometric and assembly studies show how one component participates in a larger surface. The pattern is read at close range as a collection of deep openings and from a distance as a continuous screen.
Interior renderings place the assembly between existing structural bays and brick edges. Light passing through the openings projects the depth of the block onto the floor, extending the screen’s effect into the room. Shadow is part of the design’s spatial reading, alongside the view through the wall.
An interior test of the screen’s relationship to light, structural bays and the floor.
Unit and aggregation studies connect component geometry to the repeated screen.
Testing between object and room.
The project moves between Rhino models, aggregation drawings and rendered interior studies. Successive model versions and STL files record preparation for block and 3D-print tests. This sequence allows the small unit and the larger spatial effect to inform one another.
The work belongs to a course investigating the relationship between digital geometry and cast-block fabrication. The portfolio presents the documented design, assembly studies and spatial renderings. Their emphasis is the translation of an aperture into a wall whose character changes as it is encountered.
Siyue You and Ariana Yang, Vibrant Blocks, Pratt Institute, Fall 2022. Presented as an academic block-system proposal and digital spatial study.
