The conical analysis technique, which I initiated was a method for analyzing a site in the center of Ramallah city. The aim was to understand the views in 360 degrees, first as someone stands in the middle of the site and looks around, then as someone looks from the surrounding buildings towards the site. The two resulted cones show different visual material.
When someone stands in the middle of the site - which has a critical location for being adjacent to Al-Manara square - and looks around in 360 degrees, he’ll be astonished by the incredible amount of the outstanding visual and acoustical material. As the 2D In-Out conical image illustrates, the buildings’ masses take big part of the space, however their skyline varies maintaining a balance between high rise blocking buildings and open space. Looking around, one can also notice how exposed capitalism is in the local commercial Architecture incarnated in the form of signs spreading on the facades of the buildings as means to publicize for the offices and stores they resemble, this is apart from the shopping windows that many stores excessively use to promote their goods. Another noticeable phenomenon is the use of billboards, which not only stand as visual, physical elements contributing to the materiality of our built environment, but rather carry economic and social dimensions.
On the contrary, when someone looks from the surrounding buildings towards the site, the visual material perceived is somehow different, In this case it is more about the dynamics and vitality of space, in the way it is related to the pedestrian behavior and vehicles flow, especially that the site is currently used as a parking lot. The 2D Out-In conical image demonstrates a dense, colorful picture saturated with all kinds of visual static and dynamic materials. Ascan be noticed, there’s almost full absence for the sky, and one feels as if the site has dropped in a hole that has deep walls, this makes one thinks that maybe this lot, is truly the only open unbuilt space left within the dense fabric of the city center of Ramallah, and thus the way any new investment taking place there should be implemented and designed, with serious consideration to that issue.
