In the Mosque of Cordoba (Hernan Ruiz the Younger, Andalusia, Spain, 987) the use of double arcades and the color pattern painted on the arches starts to define spatial depth looking through various perspectives, providing a richer interior space condition. This thesis is interested in the idea of the Mosque of Cordoba and work of VictorVasarely to achieve a different sense of the elevation as both shallow and deep, and raise questions as to how the flatness of elevation will be transformed when engaged columns pilasters, arcades and niches are not merely surface relief in classical architecture, but permeate through the plan and the interior as regular elements of spatial articulation.

Like Victor Vasarely, its uses of layering, adding the spectacular element to create a series of lines in the elevation plane that redefine the geometries of the surface. In this way, spatial depth and shallowness are achieved through perceptual miscues and spatial tricks. The elevation does puncture through into the interior and at times, it does affect program within the interior in forms of architectural elements such as staircase, wall partitions.

But the use of these techniques to enforce the relationship to scale, ground and ceiling are more than tricks of the eye. Flatness ismade into 3D through real depth.

The thesis is tested at the Fondeschi dei Tedeschi in Venice. The site is used as a way of locating these investigation withinthe rich history of the Classical archways, from which the thesis is drawn. The goal of this thesis is to produce a building which illicit confusion through the manipulation of perspective of the arches and patterns. Not only would the connection between archways be confused, but also the space that defines the building’s interiority. This thesis will transform the archway form a linear transitional component into an inhabitable space that obscures the transition.