A Dong, A Vande Moere & JS Gero (eds), CAADFutures’07, 525-539. © 2007 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. INTERPRETING ARCHITECTURAL SPACE THROUGH CAMERA MOVEMENT WEI YAN AND WEILING HE Texas A&M University, USA Abstract. This paper examines how camera movement interprets architectural space and describes a navigation system that is designed to facilitate real time path planning and control of camera movement. The navigation system also allows people to save and retrieve walkthrough paths and thus enables different interpretations of the space by different observers to coexist in the same space. With case studies, we demonstrate that whether a space appears intelligible or unintelligible may be manipulated in the way how the space is interpreted through camera movement. 1. Introduction In studying architectural space, walking through the space inherits a tremendous difference from looking at a model of the space. In the former case, space embodies experience, while, in the latter case, space becomes an object to be looked at from outside. Moreover, experiences within a space vary widely depending on how the space is walked through or looked at, although certain obvious attributes of the space remain. For example, the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe would appear to be composed of linear wall elements no matter how the space is perceived. However, whether the space appears confusing or not depends on how the space is experienced. The experience of space is similar to the performance of a music score. While the score determines the structure and components of a piece of music how the music is played would lead to different versions of musical interpretations, some of which can be extremely unlike in terms of how the music sounds. Same in the spatial interpretation of architectural space, although certain elements are so strong that they almost lead to identical experience, some are much dependent on how the space is walked through and looked at. The same space may have various, if not opposite, renditions. We call this phenomenon spatial interpretation through camera movement.