Wednesday, November 28, 2001

A Professor's Web Site Animates an Architect's Work By BROCK READ The architecture of Walter A. Netsch draws on what he calls "field theory" -- an intricate lattice of intersecting shapes that serves as the basis for all of his designs. It's not a system that can be easily demonstrated in a lecture hall, says Glenn Wiggins. Mr. Wiggins, a professor of architecture at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, has created a Web site that explains the function and theory of one of Mr. Netsch's strongest works. The site is anchored by a virtual tour of the Miami University Art Museum, designed by Mr. Netsch and then completed in 1978. As Mr. Wiggins delivers brief video lectures about the building's exterior and interior plans, corresponding images appear, simulating the experience of walking through the museum space. When Mr. Wiggins discusses the architect's use of foreshortening to compress the museum's gallery-side exterior, a photograph of the area in question pops up. When he points out that the same side takes on a more abstract appearance when viewed from a hill on which the museum sits, a new image emerges to represent the new perspective. There's reason to believe Mr. Wiggins's analysis: He worked closely with Mr. Netsch on parts of the Web project. Mr. Netsch took Mr. Wiggins on tours of some of his completed buildings, and the two conducted interview segments -- which appear on the Web site -- detailing the architect's views on the museum, field theory, and his oeuvre. Mr. Netsch also provided access to drawings and plans from his personal archives. Having his subject as a primary source was invaluable, according to Mr. Wiggins. "I think it's tremendous to get his insights based on what actually was happening at the time," he says. "For him to be able to tell me, 'This is what I was thinking,' is just terrific." Mr. Wiggins says he has long been an admirer of Mr. Netsch, who rose to prominence after a series of widely lauded, large-scale projects in the 1960s -- like the United States Air Force Academy Chapel -- but soon fell out of favor with critics. Mr. Wiggins conceived the online tour, he says, in part because he felt Mr. Netsch's work represented "a topic that deserved to be heard more." Robert A. Benson, chairman of the department of architecture and interior design at Miami of Ohio, agrees. The university's art museum, he says, is "probably one of Netsch's best buildings, if not his best." He likens field theory to fractal geometry in its use of repeating shapes and its combinations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures -- qualities that lend themselves to graphical demonstrations like the ones Mr. Wiggins employs. It is not Mr. Wiggins's first endeavor in multimedia instruction -- he had already created a CD-ROM detailing Louis I. Kahn's renowned design for the Phillips Exeter Academy Library. He had originally planned to develop a similar CD-ROM on Mr. Netsch's museum but opted instead to work on the Web, where his scholarship can be more easily read and updated. The Kahn project gave Mr. Wiggins experience with the Shockwave, Flash, and Director technology that marks his highly animated Web site. Although timing images of the building to appear simultaneously with fragments of his lectures was a "tricky" new wrinkle, Mr. Wiggins says that the actual construction of the site took only 80 to 100 hours. Far more time went into plotting the site's design, though. Mr. Wiggins says he has a "personal bias" against overly aggressive use of Web technology. "When you're doing this sort of stuff, you should step back a bit from what technology can do at its boldest," he says. "The technology should follow the educational objectives." He plans to test the effectiveness of his project in "History of Architecture 4," a course he will teach to 30 students in the spring. For the section on Mr. Netsch, he plans to divide the students into three groups. One will attend his lecture on the architect; one will study using his Web page; the third will make use of both media. Mr. Wiggins calls the experiment a bit of "scholarly research" into the value of online learning. Mr. Wiggins is optimistic about the results. "I think it's a pretty good piece of work," he says. "My guess is that students are going to really like it." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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