CAMOUFLAGE TYPES

Serpentine Pavilion, Sanaa, 2009 

The word "camouflage" comes from the French verb camoufler, meaning to mask or disguise. Its methods were largely pursued during WWI and WWII for concealment of factories and civilian areas and to confuse bombers. During the later war, design schools such as the Pratt Institute and the Chicago School of Design offered courses for students to learn and develop camouflage techniques. Students were taught the principles of visual perception together with the latest technologies of vision (which also had to be deceived). Visual studies were based on modern painting and Gestalt, and three of the main concepts were: patterns (which break up the shape of an object), shadows (which allow a shape to be three dimensionally perceived), and texture. According to Joy Knoblauch, this was a unique period in which architecture possessed an area of expertise aligned with science and technology with a social purpose of civilian defense.

[A]

[B]

Roy Behrens explains us two main types of camouflage: “Low visibility camouflage [fig. A] is a subversion of the difference between figure and ground, so that the things appear to be one, while dazzle camouflage [fig. B] destroys the homogeneity of the figure, so that one thing appears to be two or more.” He also calls our attention to the fact that camouflage and cubist painting used the same strategies to confuse the observer and to make things appear to be simultaneously in front and in the back of another figure.

The two types were applied to what is called passive and active camouflage. The passive one was normally applied to fixed elements and was related to the intention of concealment. Therefore it used the low visibility strategy, and examples of this are vegetation layers over the protected object or painted textures to the roofs of buildings. However, the active camouflage was related to the idea of the dazzling paintings in ships, and their purpose was to confuse the enemy regarding the actual position and direction of the ships.  The technique here was the creation of ambiguous perspective lines.   

Trying to further understand how camouflage is applied to architecture without military motivation, I have so far encountered two different categories: one regarding the object that is being hidden and the other regarding its technique.  First, the building can try to camouflage itself in relationship to it context (natural or artificial), or it can dazzle what is happening underneath its interface between interior and exterior, which is the case of translucent materials or perforated layers. Second, the building can base its camouflage by imitating some aspects of its context, or it can simply reflect its context.

I see Beires House by Alvaro Siza as using the first technique. Its volume and proportions resembles the one of the other neighbor houses, and it is precisely this resemblance that drives our attention directly to when he breaks the volume pattern with his “exploded corner”. As for the second technique, Sanaa’s Serpentine Pavilion is the best example for me, making the building both disappear and acquire a strange presence. 

Beires House, Alvaro Siza, 1979